Sermons

The Limits of Tolerance
11-27-05
Douglas Taylor

I get worried when Tolerance is put as the central value of our tradition.  I’ve actually lost sleep over this.  It’s a nuanced objection that I raise, really.  I have no strong objection to tolerance itself, of course not!  Tolerance is one of the bulwark values of liberal religion.  For generations it has been taught that the continuing thread running through the disparate communities of anti-trinitarianism in Poland and Transylvania and England and America over the past four hundred years was not a single philosophy or book or individual, rather it was the three abiding values of Freedom, Reason, and Tolerance!  Without these three, could you really call it Unitarianism?

We have ever upheld the freedom of every individual to discover for her-or-himself what is ultimately true and right.  We have always espoused the use of reason in this pursuit of truth and understanding.  And we have without fail fiercely advocated the importance of tolerance among people of good faith.  We proclaim the freedom to use reason and insist on tolerance for others to enjoy that same freedom.  Freedom, Reason and Tolerance have historically been seen as the framework around which our faith tradition is built.  This I do not deny or attempt in any way to refute.  My complaint, rather, stems from what might be considered the loss of the use of reason in this equation.  The claim that I am free to believe and behave as I will and you are beholden to tolerate it, so there!

What is missing (other than the use of Reason) in that sense of Tolerance tainted by entitlement is Respect.  But I don’t lay the blame in my complaint at the feet of our religious tradition, rather I pile it up to the knees of the culture we wade through each day.  Tolerance has become a quick and sloppy way to abdicate participation.  And if Tolerance is indeed the shining central value around which all our other values gather then we are in danger of being a vacuous institution little or no real substance and we might just as well close up shop and stop wasting everybody’s time.  But let me unpack this a little because I know I can go leaping from point to point with this and I want you to see where I am going in case you want to go there too.

Western culture, and to a greater degree Unitarian Universalism as it is articulated in modern western culture, is the heir of the Enlightenment. Our faith tradition is arguably the most liberal of the Liberal Religions, committed to personal experience and exploration rather than creed and tradition.  The term “modernity” has our fingerprints all over it.  The broader Western culture around us took on a distinctly Liberal Religious hue a few generations back, hitting a peak perhaps with the Sixties.  Suffrage, equality, desegregation, integration, peace, love, and understanding were all in fashion.  Now-a-days peace, love, and understanding don’t get much traction.  Desegregation, equality, suffrage?  These are slipping too.

Tolerance is still popular.  In the broader culture, however, tolerance these days is really just a mask worn by apathy.  Tolerance used to mean: I reserve the right to be mistaken and to make corrections along the way based on new information.  Tolerance used to mean: I think I’ve got it right, but am open to hearing another person’s proof to the contrary.  (I still try to function with that concept of tolerance.)  The definition of tolerance seems to have shifted, however, to something like: since anybody could be right, nobody is.  Since there is a significant possibility that I am mistaken, and that’s ok, it must not matter.  It must not be important to be right, or maybe there is no such thing as ‘right.’  Do you see how this could be loosely construed as logic?  It certainly doesn’t qualify as the use of reason, but it almost looks like real logic.  In the pursuit of Tolerance we lost Truth.  At least that is how it is characterized by the conservatives.

Well, every now and then I take a chance and read some of the conservative religious periodicals just to see what is holding the attention of our fundamentalist brethren and sistren.  A few years back I found a compelling article written by a Conservative Christian thinker that really rips into our liberal value of tolerance.  I found the article compelling because it offered an intelligent, albeit sensationalized for apologetics purposes, critique of this important element of our faith from outside the tradition.

Liberal Tolerance is perhaps the primary challenge to the Christian worldview current in North American popular culture.  (That is the first line of the synopsis.  It is always nice to know that we’re at the vanguard of the conservative culture’s proclaimed challenge.  The article is entitled Deconstructing Liberal Tolerance by Francis J. Beckwith, and is published in a conservative Christian periodical called Christian Research Journal.  The Synopsis goes one to say,) Proponents of [the Liberal Tolerance] viewpoint argue that it is intolerant and inconsistent with the principles of a free and open society for Christians (and others) to claim that their moral and religious perspectives are correct and ought to be embraced by all citizens.  Liberal Tolerance is not what it appears to be, however.  It is a partisan philosophical perspective with its own set of dogmas.  It assumes, for instance, a relativistic view of moral and religious knowledge.  This assumption has shaped the way many people think about issues such as homosexuality, abortion rights, and religious truth claims, leading them to believe that a liberally tolerant posture concerning these issues is the correct one and that it ought to be reflected in our laws and customs.  But this posture is dogmatic, intolerant, and coercive, for it asserts that there is only one correct view on these issues, and if one does not comply with it, one will face public ridicule, demagogic tactics, and perhaps legal reprisals.  Liberal Tolerance is neither liberal nor tolerant.  (Vol. 22, No. 3, 2000; p29)

I hope you see what I mean when I say it is sensationalized for apologetic purposes, the author overstates his case.  ‘Liberal Tolerance is neither liberal nor tolerant.’  That’s just rhetoric.  The part that hooked me, however, is this idea that Liberal Tolerance is grounded in relativism.  At least that is how it is characterized by the conservatives.  And I wonder if there might be something to it.  The article from the conservative magazine presents a clever example of this in the form of a dialogue based loosely, it says, on a real-life exchange between a high school teacher and a student:

Consider the following dialogue (based loosely on a real-life exchange) between a high school teacher and her student, Elizabeth:

Teacher:            Welcome, students. Since this is the first day of class, I want to lay down some ground rules. First, since no one has the truth, you should be open-minded to the opinions of your fellow students. Second….Elizabeth, do you have a question?

Elizabeth:            Yes, I do. If nobody has the truth, isn’t that a good reason for me not to listen to my fellow students? After all, if nobody has the truth, why should I waste my time listening to other people and their opinions. What would be the point? Only if somebody has the truth does it make sense to be open-minded. Don’t you agree?

Teacher:            No, I don’t. Are you claiming to know the truth? Isn’t that a bit arrogant and dogmatic?

Elizabeth:            Not at all. Rather, I think it’s dogmatic, as well as arrogant, to assert that there is not one person on earth who knows the truth. After all, have you met every person in the world and quizzed them exhaustively? If not, how can you make such a claim? Also, I believe it is actually the opposite of arrogance to say that I will alter my opinions to fit the truth whenever and wherever I find it. And if I happen to think that I have good reason to believe I do know the truth and would like to share it with you, why won’t you listen to me? Why would you automatically discredit my opinion before it is even uttered? I thought we were supposed to listen to everyone’s opinion.

Teacher:            This should prove to be an interesting semester.

Another student:            (blurts out): Ain’t that the truth. (the students laugh)

Conservative Christians say our tolerance is grounded in religious and moral relativism, I say it is grounded in respect and covenant!  I have often described Unitarian Universalism as a community of covenanted seekers:  We are not all on the same path but we have promised to support one another along the way.  We’re not walking on the same path but we are walking together.  We have a covenant that binds us to each other, a set of promises, if you will, that we will treat each other with respect and support.  That is something the broader culture lacks: a binding covenant and a commitment to respect.

And not unrelated, there is this misunderstanding of what tolerance is.  Tolerance is not an ‘anything-goes’ sort of mentality.  20th century Unitarian theologian James Luther Adams used to say we can have open minds, but not open at both ends.  Every now and then we do close our minds around something, sometimes that’s a good thing and sometimes that is not.  But that’s the point.  I have no problem making a major truth claim now and then.  For example: Every person has intrinsic worth and value.  Watch, I’ll do it again: There is a transformative power a work in our lives that is known by many names and misunderstood more often than not.  This is fun, here’s one I know at least some of you will refute: We are all children of God, and as such are beholden to love one another as we are loved.  I know that to be true.  All the evidence I have so far confirms the truth of that statement.  You may disagree.  We should talk about that more.  It doesn’t mean I’m not right.  It doesn’t mean you’re not right.  I could mean neither of us are right, or more likely we’re both almost right, I don’t know.

We can share this because of our commitment to tolerance.  You are free to use reason among other tools to discern the deeper truths and the meaning in life.  And we can tolerate one another’s differing answers because I also am free to use reason among other tools to discern the deeper truths and the meaning in life.  It would almost seem like there is no limit to this, right?

Well, let us push this a little.  Are there some things you or I could say that would be intolerable?  What if I told jokes about dumb blondes from the pulpit?  What if I offered a course on Anti-racism, and included a segment about how black people have small brains compared to white people?  What if I said all SUV drivers and all people who shop at Wal-Mart are sinners and should be publicly shamed?  Is this tolerable?  I don’t know; I’m trying to think about stuff that would push my buttons.  Could we tolerate people who are intolerant?  Are we accepting of bigots and open-minded about exploitation?

Back in the spring there was a flurry of e-mail on the UU minister’s chat on the topic of Tolerance.  The initial question that touched off the series was “How long do I tolerate a person with anti-Semitic leanings?”  Most of the situation as it was described involved personal e-mails sent to the minister.  For most of this I thought, “Hey, as long as the person is keeping these ‘leanings’ between him-or-herself and the minister, we can talk about tolerance.  The minister can offer counsel, a little argument perhaps, and as long as no one is hurt then who am I to say it has crossed a line?”

When the response to this minister’s initial question began to pour in from the colleagues, I read stories for example of a congregant who regularly laced the social hour beverage with LSD and the leadership tolerated it, wondering how to respond for nearly a year.  There were stories of a congregant who was known by a few as a date-rapist and who had begun preying on the women of the congregation.  There were stories of a congregant who would berate others members viciously and everyone would sort of sigh and tolerate it.  All these stories were of individuals breaking faith with the covenant of the congregation through harmful words or deeds and it distressed me and most of my colleagues and I trust it distresses you as well to hear the question ‘shouldn’t we be tolerant and open?’ rather than clear leadership statement that this is appalling and we will not allow it to continue.  Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his Letter from the Birmingham Jail that “There are some things to which a person should be maladjusted.”

It is one thing to tolerate another person’s beliefs, but we can make a very clear distinction and not tolerate words and deeds that harm other people.  We will not tolerate injustice, hatred, or bigotry in its varied and sadly plentiful forms.  We will not tolerate the denigration of an entire group or class of people in this house of worship.  We will not tolerate slander and slurs to be used within these walls.  We will not tolerate screaming and shouting as method discourse in this church.  We will not tolerate injury or the threat of injury to be perpetrated in this congregation.  I’m just getting warmed up here.  I bet we could keep going, but let us notice the key ingredient along this line of thinking.  The conservative Christians say our tolerance is grounded in religious and moral relativism, I say it is grounded in respect and our sense of covenant!  Unitarian Universalism is a community of covenanted seekers:  We are not all on the same path but we have promised to support one another along the way.

Now, I am not saying that bigotry, slander, injury and inappropriate acting out does not happen here.  I’m not saying we are perfect.  And I am not suggesting that when anything like this happens here that our first response should be excommunication!  But neither will we just wring our hands while looking the other way.  And yes, that might mean that we will tolerate a person’s beliefs but respectfully ask that they believe them somewhere other than here.  There are behaviors that we will respectfully not tolerate because they break the covenant, the bond that we have, the promise that we will treat one another as children of God, as members of one family, as partners on the journey of deeper understanding and richer connections.

As I read through this sermon early this morning, it read like I was gearing up to a big confrontation with some one of you here in the congregation who has been acting out – and that is not the case.  I am preaching a cloudy skies warning in a time of clear skies.  Certainly back in the early spring we had quite a confrontation over the vandalism done by the member of our congregation, Matthew Fox; and The UU Minister’s Chat picked up this conversation about tolerance and behavior a few months after that while we here were working through it.  But I am now taking a calm moment in the life of a vibrant, dynamic, growing congregation to tease out important ideas around the topic of tolerance; and to remind us of our promise, our covenant.

And you may be thinking to yourself, ‘I don’t remember signing any covenant. What covenant is he talking about?’  You’ve caught me there.  It is an implicit covenant that in indicated in many of our documents about the congregation, it comes out in the sermons and special services, it is between the lines in our newsletter.  That is partly why I am preaching about it now, to help make this explicit.  If you hadn’t caught on yet, here it is:  We have a deep commitment to tolerance in this congregation.  Your faith is your own, it will not be coerced.  We will tolerate a remarkable range of beliefs and convictions here.  You can believe in God, you can believe in ghosts, you can be pro-life or pro-choice or both (like I am), you can believe that ‘evil’ is merely a human construct, you can support the war or the peace efforts, you can be gay, you can shop at Wal-Mart even though I won’t, you can be against gay marriage, you can even believe in Intelligent Design.  But that is not the last word on the subject.  Tolerance won’t get us all the way there.  There are limits to tolerance.

The last word is this: We are in this together.  We are in this to make life better.  We are in this to encourage and be encouraged in our deepening journeys.  Ours is a message of blessing and acceptance, that every person has an innate value and worth, even the ones you disagree with or do not like.  It is a message that calls us through the hurt and the promise to treat one another with care and with justice.

In a world without end,

May it be so.

Forgive and Live
Douglas Taylor
10-16-05

Last week during the children’s time, Janet Shortall, our guest preacher, told the story, “What If No One Forgave?”  It is a story that I told back in the spring, so it may have been familiar.  Basically, the tale is about a little town called Grudgeville where everyone held on dearly to every personal slight or injury ever done to them.  A stranger comes into town and teaches them the magic words, “I’m sorry” and “I forgive you.”  And suddenly all the people are relieved of their burdens.  That is, of course, very simplified; but it pulls in the essential pieces.  The image that I think captures the imagination of most adults is that of the citizens of Grudgeville all hunched over by the weight of all their grudges.

Forgiveness is perhaps the ultimate religious activity.  I could be wrong about that, but it seems to me that religion is less about beliefs and more about relationships – or at least that is how it should be.  I recall that Emile Durkheim’s work uncovered the realization that religion at its earliest was less about connecting humans to God and more about connecting humans to each other.  Over the ages, one of the startling characteristics of human interaction is that all too often we have trouble connecting to one another.  Honest and open human interaction is not easy, and we usually mess it up in lesser and greater degrees.  Forgiveness is the process for repairing damaged relationships and it the process of transformative change in an individual.  The word Religion, at its roots, is re-ligare, to bind together.  Thus I find the topic of forgiveness to be centrally important to living.  Forgiveness is such a deeply religious topic with which most people typically have very little familiarity.

Let me tell you a second story now, describing with a different metaphor, the effect of carrying a grudge.  This story comes from the writings of a Sufi mystic named Hadrat Muinudin Chishti.

A man was in dire need of funds, and the only way he could acquire them was to sell his house.  He did not wish to give up the entire house, so he came to terms with the purchasers by which he retained unrestricted use of one room.  He was permitted to store there any of his possessions.  Initially, he kept only small items there, and he came from time to time and caused no disturbance.  When he changed occupations, as he did occasionally, he brought his tools to the room also.  The new owners made no protest to all this.  Finally, the man began to keep [small dead animals] in the room, and because of the stench from the decomposition, the whole abode became uninhabitable.  The new owners went to court for redress, but the judge ruled that the man had not breached the contract.  The owners ended up reselling the house, at a tremendous loss, [back] to the original owner.

Carrying a grudge against another person is like renting out a small room in your soul for someone else’s garbage and filth.  You just tuck it up there inside yourself.  One small but powerful issue left unaddressed can sap your entire spiritual growth.  It stinks, but what are you able to do about it, you’ve rented the room out.  The good news is, you don’t have to turn over the whole house.  There is something you can do.

And perhaps metaphors are not your cup of tea, fear not.  There has been scientific research into this issue, seriously!  There has been a considerable amount of scientific research done lately in he field of forgiveness, so much that for a few years forgiveness was considered a field of study rather than a a theological idea.  Sir John Templeton was a primary funding source for the Forgiveness Project which housed several research projects studying the psychological and physiological effects of forgiveness.  46 studies according to the website, actually.  The studies ranged from marital and parenting problems to victims of violent crimes to national situations such as the one in South Africa a short while ago.  Most of the studies were in connection with individuals, they found that the issues surrounding forgiveness were similar at the national level but greatly complicated by institutional and political considerations.

For the research into the more personal levels of forgiveness, researchers found it was a hot topic of interest for participants, and often were flooded with interest.  The researchers at one school, however, found they had plenty of female participants, but very few males.

To attract more male participants for a study of forgiveness, Stanford psychologists were forced to adjust the wording of the project.  [Researchers] said the word “forgiveness” easily attracted women to participate, but men weren’t calling.  In an effort to figure out why, [they] randomly asked a group of men about it.  The consensus was the word “forgiveness” is too soft and acquiescing, like a doormat or someone who turns the other cheek.  The men suggested the psychologists use the word “grudge” instead, since it’s harsh and seemed more masculine.  [The researchers] took their advice and created flyers saying “Got a grudge?” and the calls from men began pouring in.

The general conclusion so far indicates show that the person who forgives is happier and perhaps even healthier. While the goal of forgiving may be noble, the effects are concrete.  For example, a study completed at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, indicates that unforgiving responses can erode health, while forgiving responses can enhance it.  That is a little vague.  Another study done at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, found a strong correlation between unforgiveness and the illnesses associated with high blood pressure.  This becomes a little more specific.

There was one study of newlywed couples done by Dr. Worthington which involved electronically monitoring for signs of high stress

“It turns out there is a psychobiology to forgiveness. Transgressions are stressful, you see, and when a trauma happens such as a betrayal, the brain secretes cortisole which burns a memory,” Dr. Worthington explained. “The idea to forgive and forget is crazy! Your whole body is telling you to remember this trauma, so it won’t happen again.  People who don’t forgive, though, have a build up of cortisole,” he continued. “This puts the body under stress, and every time they think about the wrong done them, there’s even more stress.  I always say, ‘learn to forgive because it’s good for your health.’”

And one more, I just have to share with you, is the conclusions of a Stanford study of forgiveness done by Dr. Luskin, who says, “Forgiveness is about how you handle [frustrations about how things in life never seem quite aligned.  A common choice is to blame it on someone else.”  Blaming others causes more suffering because people rarely change, he says.  It’s better to break the habit of blame and accept the way things are.  For those who cause us grievances, Luskin suggests: “Rent them a small room, not the whole house.”  Well, sometimes, renting your grudges a small room is a step forward; and sometimes it is what holds you back.  You’ll need to sort out which is true for you.  And it seems that scientist will occasionally drift into the use of metaphor.

I do hope you noticed that at least one researcher specifically stated, and I got the sense in my reading that there was general agreement on this, that the “and forget” part of the old cliché is not a good idea.  From the antiphonal reading we did earlier, it was the quote from JFK which said, “Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.”  And none of the other quotes contradicted that.  Forgiveness is not amnesia, or a glossing over of the transgression.  Forgiveness is not a pretending that everything is back to right or that things are not the way that they are.

Forgiveness is about rebuilding and repairing a relationship that has been injured.  It is extending an opportunity for better things to come.  It doesn’t mean ignoring an injustice or letting someone treat you badly.  It doesn’t mean you’re leaving yourself open to be hurt again.  It means, accepting that what has happened has happened, but you are let it be so that there is an opportunity to rebuild.  “Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.”

Much of that interesting research has been done from the perspective of the person who is injured, the one who holds the grudge, the one who would do the forgiving, the victim.  And so, much of what is offered is how to deal with that end of it.  Often, however, when a relationship has been damaged and forgiveness is needed, it is needed on both sides.  Not always, but often.

I remember a sour relationship I had with someone I only see occasionally.  Over the years I grew to accept who this person is, to empathize with her so that I was able to forgive her the hurts she had given me.  It was a powerfully cleansing step for me.  I no longer felt held by the burden of resenting her or carrying my grudge for her.  Unfortunately, that was not the end of it.  As I accepted her and empathized with her, I began to understand the events form her perspective and to realize that I needed to be forgiven as well.  It had been so nice when I thought she was a mean person or at least a misguided one.  It was so easy when I only saw how she had overreacted and had said hurtful things.  All my friends agreed with me, she was at fault and I was blameless, or nearly so.

I thought I had reached a level of peace and release when I forgave her, but how much deeper a change was wrought when I saw my own contribution, took steps to correct that behavior within myself, and sought her forgiveness.  I’ll not forget what happened and how I had been hurt, but neither will that memory stand in the way of the fact that people change.

So, how to do it?  The reading from Fred Muir proposes four steps to forgiveness: remorse, resolution, restitution, and restoration.  Over the years I have characterized forgiveness as having three steps: confession, atonement, and repentance. When I was younger someone taught me the line: “Make admission, make amends, then we all come back as friends.”  Cute, isn’t it?  But I bet you’re thinking, “Which one does he want us to remember?  There are so many steps, so many different names to all these steps! Ack! How am I supposed to remember how to do this?”  There are probably dozens of names for the steps, and dozens of suggested styles that have four or five or eight steps or maybe only two.  The essence of it is that Forgiveness is a process of repairing relationships.

First you must admit you have made mistakes.  There is a cliché that “confession is good for the soul,” and generally this is very true.  And feeling a little guilty for your mistakes, or remorse, as Muir puts is in the reading, isn’t so bad.  Guilt is not so bad if you really have hurt someone and you can take the steps to do something with the guilt.  I’m certainly not suggesting that you hold onto your guilt; that can prove just as painful, though in a different way, as holding onto your grudges.  But with guilt, at least, you can do something.  Guilt is like pain.  It is information telling you that something is wrong.  We don’t want pain!  We don’t want guilt!  But it serves a purpose.  All of us make mistakes; all of us unintentionally, and at times, intentionally injure others through word and deed.  Pretending this is not so will not help.  So, whichever set of steps or words you’re using, the first thing to do in the process of forgiveness is admit your mistakes.

The next part of forgiveness is to do something with this information.  Like the information you receive from physical pain, you have things you can do: you’re your hand out of the very hot water.  Don’t stick it in the hot water again.  In the same way, information we glean from part one, admitting to mistakes and feeling bad about them, is information we can use to change what we’re doing: don’t say mean things just because you’re angry, and apologize for the mean thing you said just then when you were angry.  Call up those people you have injured or hurt and say, “I am sorry.”  Call up people who have hurt you and say, “I forgive you.”  Apologies, resolution, atonement, amends, whatever you call it, this is the “I’m sorry, I’ll never do it again” phase, or at least, “I’m sorry, I don’t fully understand what I did that has hurt you, how can I make it up to you?”

Finally, the third step could be considered the result of forgiving or being forgiven, but I think of it as the last step to forgiveness, as do most of the “how to be forgiven” lists I looked through.  We confess our faults and failings; we make amends with apologies and promises of improvement; and then we improve.  We repent, we change our ways, we take to heart the concerns of the other, we begin again in love, we take one more step toward being our better selves.  I didn’t say it was simple.

I’ll end by sharing with you this list compiled by one of the researchers (Richard Fitzgibbons) of all the benefits for the one who forgives:

On the other hand, one who cannot forgive may continue to suffer endlessly.  One who cannot forgive just tucks that grudge up in that rented room inside the soul.  As an old Chinese proverb puts it, “The man who opts for revenge should dig two graves.”  This work is not only for repairing our relationships; forgiveness is the ultimate religious activity, for it allows you deepen and grow.

In a world without end,

May it be so.

Nature as Guide
11-6-05
Douglas Taylor

In Hindu scripture there is a story of a student asking the master about the nature of the transcending reality that is often called God.  The student asked how it is we can know about the great mystery.  The master told the student to fetch a glass of water and a bit of salt.  The master then instructed the young one to stir the salt into the water and then asked, “Where is the salt?”

“Why, it is in the water,” replied the student.

“But we cannot see the salt,” the master said.  “How are we to know the salt is really there?”

“The water will taste salty,” answered the student.

“Just so!” said the master.  “In the same way can we know about the transcending reality of life, by experiencing it.”

Jesus extorted his followers to not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own.  Indeed, he said, “look to the birds in the air” and “consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.”  He spoke of faith being like a seed and good deeds as fruit.  Perhaps the image that has struck deepest other than that of God being like a father, is the story of the shepherd and the lost sheep.  “Take care that you do not despise one of these little ones; for I tell you, in heaven their angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven.  What do you think?  If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine one the mountain and go in search of the one that went astray?  And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray.  So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.”

There is a Buddhist meditation that I learned years ago now that reflects on the power pervasiveness of water, on its essential and humble qualities; suggesting that we, too, like water can move through life with a humble power.

The central metaphor we evoked last week during the Samhain service was that of the dying leaves of autumn.  Leading up to the releasing fire, I invited us to consider the lesson offered by these dying leaves and what we could let go of as we each journey into the deep winter time.

Annie Dillard writes, “I could very calmly go wild.”  In our reading this morning she suggest that the single-mindedness of the weasel is something lacking in human living and that we could learn something from those wild things out there.

Are you noticing the common thread here?  Time and again, religions turn to the natural world for guidance in how to live.  Time and again the metaphors we use in religion to describe life or God or faith, are metaphors from nature.  Time and again in the deep questions of who we are and how we are to live, nature is our guide.  Unitarian Universalism is heir to a remarkable tradition that held this focus on the natural world.  The Transcendentalists, most notably Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, were people who believed in the imminence of God in every person.  They turned to nature to for insight and understanding.

There is a reading in our hymnal from Ralph Waldo Emerson that is about roses.  The transcendentalists were generally quite skilled at recognizing in nature the secrets of a good life.  “These roses under my window,” Waldo wrote, “make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today.  There is no time to them.  There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.”  This is so common a statement from naturalists and transcendentalists.  It recurs in literature regularly.  The world of nature: flowers, animals, waterfalls; these do not tax themselves with preoccupations and worries.  One of the goals of Buddhist meditation is to become present to the moment.  A task which is so simple for a dog or a bird or an infant, is so very difficult for you and me.

As Emerson says, the rose under his window is ‘perfect in every moment of its existence.’  “But we postpone or remember.  We do not live in the present, but with reverted eye lament the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround us, stand on tiptoe to foresee the future.  We cannot be happy or strong until we too live with nature in the present above time.”  Think back to a time when you were fully happy.  Where you watching the clock?  Or was time flying while you were having fun?  Think back to a time when you were fully happy.  Where you multi-tasking?  Or were you fully present and enjoying the moment, ‘perfect in every moment of your existence.’

So many examples from nature lead us to the conclusion that single-minded attentiveness is highly valued.  So often, however, we hear appreciation and praise of multi-tasking; as if multi-tasking is some how better than being able to focus on one thing, as if having a fragmented attention is a good thing.  Multitasking only gives the illusion of creating extra time.  This and other behaviors like it work to divide our attention in too many directions.  We are in danger of becoming fragmented.

I had a fascinating experience this week that tied together much of what I was reading for this Sunday’s sermon.  I was invited to speak to a class of grade school English teachers in Elmira College.  The teachers were all taking a graduate level class in literature.  Their professor had them reading The Scarlet Letter and Moby Dick, and he thought it would be great to get either a modern-day Calvinist, Wiccan, or Unitarian in to speak with them because these were the faith traditions that came up in the books.  The professor found me and invited me over.  A few days before the class he sent me a list of questions they had brainstormed the week before.

The first question they asked was “Do you believe that contemporary America is a Puritan country?”  They had just finished reading The Scarlet Letter, so this was foremost in their minds.  My response was “No,” because the most predominant characteristic in our country today is the fragmentation.  We are too fragmented to have one characteristic such as Puritanism shine through as a dominant characteristic.  There are certainly pockets of it alive today, and pockets of anti-Puritanism as well which is really the same thing, just in the opposite direction.  American society holds too many sub-cultures for there to be any ONE dominate culture informing us.  Now, answering that puritan question with a little more time and a little more thought would probably yield a “yes” from me as well as my initial “no,” and that be make a good sermon down the road.

But my initial response lead right into their second question, “What, if anything, is wrong with American society?”  When my kids had seen that question on the sheet they had said “what do you mean, ‘if anything’?”  What, if anything, is wrong with American society?  I said, “Well, some people don’t think anything is wrong.”  “What?!?” they asked incredulously.  We could develop quite a list, I am sure:  incivility, greed, privatization, thoughtless destruction of the good earth, a political administration gutting our domestic infrastructure and crusading across foreign nations, excessive moralizing about sexuality while ignoring the poor, apathy; we could have a couple of months worth of sermons from that question and more importantly: how to respond.  My answer from earlier this week: ‘fragmentation leading to radical alienation.’

As a nation we are fragmented down into market groups, special niches, and subcultures galore.  As individuals we are also driven to distraction be multiple competing demands of our attention and focus, driven from integrity – from an integrated whole – into dis-integration.  We learn to juggle our calendars and to multi-task and to act like the dancing bear in the circus.  For whom do we perform?  What is gained by all that, and what is lost?  “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”  (Mark 8:35).

Can you imagine a tree acting like that?  Or a bird?  I can’t even imagine what that might be like!  Henry David Thoreau wrote,

Nature never makes haste; her systems revolve at an even pace.  The buds swell imperceptibly, without hurry or confusion, as though the short spring days were an eternity.  Why, then, should man hasten as if anything less than eternity were allotted for the least deed?  The wise man is restful, never restless or impatient.

This is not entirely true, but generally speaking this is how it happens.  Thoreau says nature does not hurry or get confused.  But strange behavior was noticed in the trees along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico last month.  People are saying the trees were confused, that they were “fooled by the wind, raid, and cold of the hurricane into thinking that winter had already come and gone.” (From a web log by Bishop Hope Ward)   This October the trees down there went into bloom and produced fruit out of season.  They call it a “Second Spring.”  It is not just a metaphor; there are photographs of a fig tree producing figs in October.  Now, I’ve learned not to believe everything I see and read on the internet, but NPR was reporting on this too so I’m inclined to believe the reports.

But I don’t think the trees are confused or fooled.  I think it is just an extra part of the natural system!  When devastation hits, the land responds.  There is a natural resiliency in the world; and in people as well.  So, while nature can be thrown out of her “even pace” as Thoreau calls it, it is still ill stated to say the trees are confused.

Confused is what we get.  Distracted and fragmented, that is our lot.  Emerson suggests we could learn something from the roses under his window.  Jesus thinks the lilies of the field could offer insight.  Annie Dillard, from our reading this morning, proposes the same concerning weasels.  “I might learn something of mindlessness,” she writes, “something of the purity of living in the physical senses and the dignity of living without bias or motive.”

“I could very calmly go wild.  I could live two days in the den, curled, leaning on mouse fur, sniffing bird bones, blinking, licking, breathing musk, my hair tangled in the roots of grasses.  Down is a good place to go,” she writes, “where the mind is single.”  She asks if we can really live that way, though.  “We could, you know,” she finally concludes.  “We can live any way we want.  People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience – even of silence – by choice.  The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender spot and plug into that pulse.”

And there is something in that last line, that line where she says “the thing is to stalk your calling.”  There is a clue there that also comes pouring out from the essays of the transcendentalists and the sermons of the messiah and the lessons of the Buddha.  There is a clue here that nature can be not only a guide to living well and living healthy.  The single-mindedness, the focused attentiveness, the ability to be here now is simply an underlying element to nature.  And it is something in the nature of you and me as well.  We can live that way.

In a world without end

May it be so

Practicing Reverence
Douglas Taylor
10-2-05

We went raspberry picking this weekend.  We picked apples, too, but I enjoy raspberries more, both in the eating and in the picking!  And as I stood there, stooped over the berry bushes, my wife one row over with Brin, Keenan and Piran a short way further down the row with me, I thought of several spiritual lessons that could be derived from raspberry picking; such as, needing to stoop a bit because some of the best berries are under the leaves and effectively hidden from sight unless you are only three feet tall or are a little stooped over.  And life is sometimes like that, too.  Or I might choose to tell you about the pinkish-red stains on my fingertips and how what you love and what you do will mark you and show through.  Or I could have found a juicy metaphor about discernment and about how to tell the ripe fruit from the unripe and the over-ripe.  Indeed I tell you I was confounded and overwhelmed by how much a simple expedition to the berry patch could illustrate and reveal.  Indeed I tell you, despite befuddling difficulties such as this, I take great pleasure in my work.

I did eventually discover which aspect of this family outing held the secretly deep insight that I wanted to share with you all today.  And, as it turns out, it is not a metaphor, but the reality of something I discovered out there in the berry patch with my wife and our children.  It is simply this: raspberries taste so much better when you pick them yourself.

There is a story of an ocean fish who searched and searched for this thing called the ocean that others spoke of.  He asked older and wiser fish but was always disappointed when they told him he was swimming in it.  “What I am swimming in is water.  What I am seeking is the ocean.” And on he would search.

And so, you and I go searching for God, truth, spirituality, and so many things like this.  “But this is just life going on around me, what I am seeking is God.”  Silly fish, there isn’t anything to look for, all one must do is look!  You’re swimming in it!  Wherever you are is a good enough place to find what you seek.  Or try the raspberry bushes in autumn.  And to think, some only find berries there!

One thing, however, is certainly needed before you start – reverence.

At the beginning of this morning’s reading, Paul Woodruff offered a definition of Reverence that agrees with the standard dictionary and more.  “Reverence,” he writes, “begins in a deep understanding of human limitations; from this grows the capacity to be in awe of whatever we believe lies outside our control – God, truth, justice, nature, even death.  The capacity for awe, as it grows, brings with it the capacity for respecting fellow human beings, flaws and all.”

Why do the berries taste better when you pick them yourself?  Is it just that they are fresher?  I should think that is part of it.  But it also has something to do with the fact that it was my hands moving through the berry bushes harvesting these little fruit.  So small, those berries; so simple, the task to pull them from the bush; so insignificant, the energy I expend to collect this fruit; yet how grand the system and energy that went into creating and growing those raspberries.  From seed to bush to fruit, year after year of fruit, generation after generation of bush, age after age of seed; and I simply stoop down, push aside a few leaves, and pluck the fruit.

Now, it seems to me I have at least two ways I could see this, assuming I think about it at all.  I could revel in my own power to pluck the fruit that took so long to grow and ripen.  Or I could be humble in the face of how little control I have over such powerful creative forces.  According to Woodruff as he articulated in our reading this morning, the distinction between the two perspectives is reverence.  “Reverence is the capacity to be in awe of whatever we believe lies outside our control.”

Both ‘respect’ and ‘awe’ are listed as synonyms for reverence, but of the two, ‘awe’ fits better.  Awe is respect tinged with fear, a mingling of wonder and dread inspired by both majesty and the sublime.  Thus, the words “awesome” and “awful” both have their root in the word “awe.”  Now, I hope we don’t get tangled up on this word.  Awe is not the same as fear.  Let us not confuse reverent with God-fearing.  Usually those who most revere God are those who least fear God.  And consider, when Albert Schweitzer spoke of Reverence for Life, he was not speaking of a fear of life.

While picking berries a few days back, I was not suddenly struck by an overwhelming fear of berries, rather the feeling of awe was just that: awe – respect tinged with fear for the majesty of the whole show.  And it only lasted a moment.  Most of the time I was thinking and feeling those ordinary, mundane things that you feel on a family outing: happiness, pride, silliness, love, where did the boys get off to now? Let’s not get carried away, we don’t need that many apples. Hey, these raspberries taste really good.  Reverence is the capacity to feel awe.  You’re swimming in it all the time, but that doesn’t mean you are aware of it at every moment, (unless, I suppose, you are a saint or enlightened.)  Reverence is about not your constancy, but your capacity to feel awe.

I don’t know if you have noticed or not, but there has been a bit of a stir in Unitarian Universalism over the past few years involving the word ‘reverence.’  Specifically, there has been a call for a language of reverence.  Why?  Well, that is part of the confusion.  Some have seen this call as a push to bring back a lot of old words from our protestant Christian past, to dust off words like God, Sin, Prayer, and Salvation and to try and make those old words ring again, make them respectable in UU circles once more.  But that can’t be what it’s all about because that’s just silly.  Those words never left our circle, they’re still here.  And they get used when they need to be and they still ring, at least when they’re spoken in truth.

Another reason cited for why we need a language of reverence is so we can engage in conversation with our religious brothers and sisters from other religious traditions using words they can relate to.  Again, I think that’s silly because having words with which to talk to other religions will not make us actually talk with other religions more.  Maybe we should just get out there and start talking with and partnering with other faith traditions rather than having yet another internal debate about who we are and how we are going to define ourselves to the one another and the rest of the world.

Still one other reason cited for needing a vocabulary of reverence is that everyone has experiences of reverence, moments of inarticulate awe, and it would be nice to have some language with which to articulate those experiences.  Here, now, is a reason I can work with.  I am not interested in learning a new language or revamping someone else’s for the sake of then being able to communicate with them.  That will simply lead to confusion.  But if we start from the fact that we have experiences of reverence, what can we do but try to find words that will help us share those experiences.  And, of course, this can prove quite tricky.  As one story goes:

The seeker approached the disciple and asked respectfully,

“What is the meaning of human life?” 

The disciple consulted the works of his master and confidently replied,

“Human life is nothing but the expression of God’s exuberance.” 

When the seeker addressed the master himself with the same question,

 the master said, “I do not know.”

Sometimes the words get in the way.  Sometimes in our searching for understanding we find a great many words, but as we dig deeper we discover that we have moved from ignorance, through masked ignorance posing as knowledge, until we finally come to a place of wisdom and understanding, a powerful place of connectedness, a place where there are few words to explain or label what is known.  And, you know, I think I find that place every now and then.  But a significant part of my job is caught up in words and so I expect most of my life is spent as the disciple in the story who says, “Human life is nothing but the expression of God’s exuberance.”  That’s not so bad.

This is a significant reason why I love being a Unitarian Universalist preacher, in all honesty: this striving to articulate the ineffable experiences that fill every person’s days, trusting that the deeply personal is at the same time deeply universal.  I try to have a foot on each side of that line of distinction, half my time with words striving to say what can not be said, half my time digging below the words into life and spirit.  In Unitarian Universalism our primary source of truth and insight is life itself.  This makes it difficult to find the words sometimes, but I do love it.

One thing I do miss in our faith tradition, however, is specific holidays and other regularly scheduled times for us to address timeless spiritual needs together in our own unique Unitarian Universalist way.  We point to and occasionally go through the steps of other holidays from the world’s religions, like Easter and Yom Kippur and Samhain, but we have no holidays that are our own.  Sadly Unitarian Universalism has inherited a fierce iconoclastic tendency that has led us through the years to abandon communal rituals and prayers as misleading or empty.  It has led us to honor each person’s unique approach over a communal approach.  What that gains us is the authentic search for truth and meaning because each person’s experiences are their own and are honored.  What we have lost is the recurring opportunity to discover anew the meaning and power of adjusting ourselves to the depths to be found in deep rituals.  What we have lost by shunning rituals and ceremonies where the same questions arise and the same responses are given is the chance to take in some wisdom without it being explained first with fresh and entertaining words.

For example, the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, will begin at sundown tomorrow night.   Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (the Jewish Day of Atonement) are the start and finish of the ten Days of Awe.  The New Year is a time of prayer and reflection.  It is a time to look at the life you have been living with a particular perspective: Have I been a good person, have I served life, have I helped my fellow human beings?  This litany of reflection took place last year around this time and will take place again nest year around this same time.  Yet each year as you ‘go through the motions’ there is a chance that you are actually ready to receive them and be transformed.  Each time you engage the ceremony is an opportunity to go beyond the words of the ceremony and tap into the real stuff of life.

The holy month of Ramadan on the Islamic calendar also begins this week.  For Muslims it is a time for fasting and prayer.  It is a time when believers are encouraged to read the Koran in full.  Even though you read it last year, you read it in full again this month.  Even though last time, you didn’t understand all of it then, or didn’t like parts of it, you still read through the holy book.  Ramadan is a time to reverently turn back to the basics of the Islamic faith.  It is an opportunity to go beyond the words of the book and of the rituals, an opportunity to tap into the real stuff of life.  And so the Muslim people are encouraged to enter this holy time with reverence, anticipating the majesty of what they might experience.

If you could institute a new holiday for Unitarian Universalism, what would it be?  A feast day for a special person like Emerson or event in our history like the Edict of Torda?  A day of repentance and atonement?  A celebration of a change in the season and a mirrored shift in the lives of most of our people?  A serious time for reflection and sacrifice, a reenactment, a playful meal, a sacred trip to a sacred location like Walden?  What would it be?  A Water Communion, a Flower Communion, Question Box Sunday?  Do you think you could get the following Monday off work?  Could you face the recurring opportunity to discover anew the meaning and power of adjusting yourself to the depths that can be found in a deep ritual or ceremony?  Could you enter the holy time with reverence, anticipating the majesty of what you might experience?  Could you engage in this opportunity to go beyond the words of the ceremony and tap into the real stuff of life?  Could you open your mind and your heart, and stay humble for the possibility?  Could you at least show up and practice reverence?

Reverence is a frame of mind, a frame of heart, perhaps, to keep us humble, keep us tuned to the deeper levels of life.  Reverence begins with an understanding our limitations, according to Woodruff.  You know, when I was out there among the raspberry bushes with my family, my fingertips did get some pinkish-red stains.  What you love and what you do will mark you and show through.  What you revere, when you stand in awe, will mark you and humble you and will show through.  And that’s not so bad.

In a world without end,

May it be so.

Undeserved Abundance (and Hardship)
UUCB
9-18-05
Rev. Douglas Taylor

Have you ever seen
Anything
In your life
More wonderful
Than the way the sun
Every evening,
Relaxed and easy,
Floats toward the horizon
And into the clouds or the hills,
Or the rumpled sea,
And is gone –
And how it slides again
Out of the blackness,
Every morning,
On the other side of the world,
Like a red flower
Streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
Say, on a morning in early summer,
At its perfect imperial distance –
And have you ever felt for anything
Such wild love –
Do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
A word billowing enough
For the pleasure
That fills you,
As the sun
Reaches out,
As it warms you
As you stand there,
Empty-handed –
Or have you too
Turned from this world –
Or have you too
Gone crazy
For power,
For things?

This poem by Mary Oliver, “The Sun” captures the essential qualities of grace, for it is grace I wish to speak of this morning.  Grace, one of those old theological words from earlier days and earlier traditions among us; grace, one of those “traditional religious” words that grow dry and pious from overuse and misunderstanding; indeed, grace is what I did wish to speak of this day.  My title, “Undeserved Abundance” was meant to tug at a fresh way of seeing this old word and breaking open a deeper understanding for us.  Undeserved: all the standard theologians over the ages have agreed that Grace is a gift, a gift you do not deserve, earn, or merit; you just receive, it is given to you, poured out.  It just happens.  Abundance: because it is always around you, always available, always awaiting your notice.  Grace: undeserved abundance.

Someone once said Grace is when you receive what you do not deserve, and mercy is when you do not receive what you deserve.  Grace is blessings and abundance, undeserved.  It didn’t have to be like that, it might not have happened that way, but it did.  What did you ever do to deserve ripe cantaloupe or true friends or lilac bushes or this church community?  Did you happen to notice “the way the sun every evening, relaxed and easy, floats toward the horizon”?  The sun does this every evening.  It does not care what your day was like or if your actions warrant this gift, it is there for you all the same, all you must do is – notice.

UU minister, Peter Fleck tells us, “Grace is a blessing, a blessing that is undeserved, unsolicited, and unexpected, a blessing that brings a sense of the divine order into our lives.  The ways of grace are mysterious, we cannot figure them out.  But we know grace by its fruits, by the blessings of its works.”  (Come As You Are)  Grace is a blessing, he says. And I would add that with grace, your abundant blessings become more evident to you.  The blessing of grace allows you to see the manifold blessings that surround your days and fill your life.  And have you ever seen how the sun “slides again out of the blackness, every morning, on the other side of the world, like a red flower streaming upward on its heavenly oils”?

One of my theology professors at the Methodist seminary I attended liked to share a personal story from his childhood as a parable toward understanding grace.  He describes a time when he and his older brother were at the beach, they had the standard brotherly competitive streak that often resulted in contests and races.  Well, the race that took place in the story my professor told was a race from the beach out to the floating dock marking one corner boundary of the deep end in the lake.  As they tore across the beach, they stayed neck and neck; but in the water, the older boy seemed to just slip through the water while the younger pulled and strained and kicked with all his might.  As his older brother slipped further and further ahead, the young boy who would become my theology professor, realized his error.  He was spending all his energy to fight the water, while his brother was riding the water, using the power of the water more than his own strength to get through the water.  It downed on him suddenly, his brother always won these races in the water because his brother did not fight the water; he used the water.

With this story before us, our professor would pause dramatically (I’d heard him tell the story twice and he did this both times,) he would pause and then say, “That is what grace is like.  It is always there, we’re swimming in it!  It is always available to us, but we must first stop fighting to be in control, we must relax our own need to move forward by our own power alone, we must relax and accept the gift before we actually feel its power in our lives.”

Frederick Beuchner speaks of grace as a gift, but adds, “There’s only one catch.  Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you’ll reach out and take it.”  You do have some work to do.  As with the story my theology professor liked to tell, you don’t just float on the water to get to the dock, you still need to kick your legs and move your arms.  You don’t need to fight it, but you do still need to kick a little.  You need to be open to it, you need to notice.  Have you ever noticed “the way the sun every evening, relaxed and easy, floats toward the horizon”?  “Have you ever seen anything in your life more wonderful”?

In speaking of grace this way, as a blessing, as a way of noticing the world, as a way of being in the world, as a style issue, we would do well to not lose sight of that old traditional interpretation whereby Grace was the demonstration of God’s love for you.  Beuchner characterizes grace this way: “The grace of God means something like: here is your life.  You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you.  Here is the world.  Beautiful and terrible things will happen.  Don’t be afraid.  I am with you.  Nothing can ever separate us.  It’s for you I created the universe.  I love you.” (Listen To Your Life)

This now, is powerful stuff.  I can attest to this, it is powerful and awesome to be loved this way.  But here is where we begin to get sticky.  “All good gifts around us are sent from heaven above.”  That’s the title of a song from the musical Godspell, but it is also the sentiment of many people.  All the good stuff comes from God, but what about the rest?  Where do the hurricanes come from?  Do insurance companies still use the phrase, “Act of God” to describe natural disasters?

Natural disasters are certainly undeserved.  Despite some examples of Bad Theology, most people do not honestly believe that God sends Hurricanes and Tsunamis as a means of dispensing divine justice and punishment.  Of course, there are those few who are always tempted into Bad Theology by events such as this.  Like the story of the preacher on the Sunday after a tornado swept through town telling his people on Sunday morning, “I went past where the Methodist Church was before the tornado.  But it is there no longer.  I drove over to see the Presbyterian Church, but it was gone.  The Catholic Church on Main Street and the Baptist Church near the green, — both gone.  But our church was spared; God chose to leave our church standing.”  That is just Bad Theology.

And there are those who have taken the bait and slipped into a similar bad theology about the events surrounding hurricane Katrina.  The people of New Orleans did not deserved this, the people in the surrounding areas were not ‘collateral damage’ if you will, as if they were unfortunately caught in the path of God’s just retribution.  No.  The suffering and hardship they have experienced was undeserved and outside their control.

And I shutter to hear the phrase “Act of God” in connection with this disaster, indeed I see far too much in this disaster that was the act of people, or perhaps the lack of action on the part of people.  When the levees broke, that was no act of God; that was the lack of funding from the federal government despite repeated appeals from scientists and engineers.  When FEMA’s response was so slow and feeble, that was no act of God; that was the act of the neo-conservative administration hell-bent of gutting the infrastructure by placing unqualified cronies in charge of under-funded domestic programs.  When the hurricane crashed so easily through the Mississippi delta region, that was not an act of God; that was the act of several consecutive government administrations, though in large part this current one which drained and destroyed as much as 20 million acres of wetlands which served as a natural buffer against such volatile storms.  When so many thousands of people were not evacuated from the city, that was not an act of God; that was the negligent hubris of a town that only planned for a level 3 or below storm, and had no plan in place for a storm of this level.  I’ll even go so far as to say the immenseness of this hurricane was no act of God; even that we can connect to the effects of the increased temperature of the oceans due to global warming (which the Bush administration still denies is a reality)!  In my reckoning, the vast blame for this catastrophic loss of life can be laid not upon the hurricane itself, but on the appalling lack of preparation and response from the city, the state, and the federal government.  This was not an act of God; this was a colossal failure of leadership.

This devastation was no act of God.  “Here is the world,” Beuchner wrote.  “Beautiful and terrible things will happen.  Don’t be afraid.  I am with you.”  That is grace.  Grace is not only found in noticing the beauty of the sunset.  Grace is always around us, always available; it is as if we are swimming in it.  Grace is found in the way we come to see life as a blessing.  It is found in the way we come to see the abundance of what we have, for at a moment we may no longer have it.

My life is filled with undeserved abundance.  I have the love of my wife and children.  I do not deserve it, I did not win it or earn it or buy it.  It is a gift for which I strive to worthy.  Yet at those times when I prove unworthy of that love, they love me anyway.  It is a gift.  I have a home, I have meaningful work, I have a car enough money to pay for its fuel.  I have certainly worked for these things, earned them you could say; but through no fault of my own, I could lose it all.  And yet, there might still be grace.  There might still be such abundance in my life that it fills my heart and keeps me going.

And I can become a vehicle for grace for others.  “Have you ever felt for anything such wild love,” Mary Oliver’s poem asks. Have you ever loved anything the way you are loved?  I am unwilling to call the hurricane an act of God, but an open hearted response to the devastation… I would be willing to let God have the credit for that.  If I reach out with generous compassion, I could call that an act of God.  I could call that grace.

How could you become an agent of grace.  How might you allow some of your own undeserved abundance to pour out to those with undeserved suffering and hardship?  I read a story yesterday on the Beliefnet website.  Deane knew I was looking for stories about grace and about Katrina, she pointed out to me a webpage in the Beliefnet site that contained dozens of stories of hope and help rendered to those in need.  One story grabbed me.  It was about a woman from New Orleans named Mabel who walked though neck-deep flood waters with her children, her sister, and her sister’s children to get out of the city, only to run into such disorganization and chaos that walking two miles with seven other behind her and her own head just barely above water was merely the first step in the journey to safety.  Mabel got her family to the super dome, (you remember the super dome, the one that was next to the other levee that hadn’t broken yet.)  The chaos in the dome was terrifying.  “The crowd grew crazier every minute,” she said.  “Guns were being fired in the dome; there were no lights in the rest room.”  I can’t bear to tell you what was going on in those dark bathrooms.

Mabel and her family spent the night in the dome while empty buses sat outside the dome, buses that would remain empty until the next afternoon; buses that eventually took her and her family to the Astrodome in Houston.  In Houston, Mabel tracked down her own mother, her other three sisters and their kids.  She’s had enough of waiting, however.  She walked over to a cell phone dealer a few blocks from the dome.  She had lost her cell phone in the New Orleans muck and she had no money, but she had an account with them and they agreed to just bill her.  So she got her phone and started making calls.  Mabel called the South West Unitarian Church.

I stared at this article and felt suddenly disoriented.  Was this a Unitarian Universalist website?  No.  Was I in the middle of an article specifically geared toward UUs?  No.  Have you ever had that experience where you bump into somebody you know in a setting you’re not used to seeing them; like stumbling into your neighbor at a wedding taking place out of town?  Well, I was a little disoriented to find Unitarianism cropping up in this article.  It turns out the author of this article I was halfway through is a syndicated newspaper columnist and president of a mid-sized Unitarian Universalist church in Georgia.  And it turns out, Mabel and her children, her mother, her sisters, and all her sisters’ children landed in the care of that congregation.  “By the time you read this,” Lisa McLeod writes, “my church will have fed Mabel’s family and all her sisters’ families’ breakfast.  And my neighborhood will have delivered 19 duffel bags filled with clothes, toys and toiletries.”

Here in Binghamton, we have been jumping around trying to find the best way to offer our help.  Many of us have sent money, several have tried to organize various efforts to send stuff down to Louisiana, or to open our homes and bring people up here to us.  We’ve made a few informal contacts such as Lisa McLeod had done with Mabel.  We’ve also connected with UU congregation down south in the effected areas, and we’re tapped in to the Red Cross effort to relocate people.  The people managing these efforts will have a table set up in the social hall to help you better understand the specifics of what we are striving toward and how you can take part.

Here then, is an opportunity to reach out and serve as an agent of grace for others.  Here then, is an opportunity to allow your own underserved abundance to pour out and help those in the midst of undeserved suffering and hardship.  Grace is a gift, it is undeserved and unearned.  It is a gift that will fill your days beyond measure if you will but reach out for it.  And how amazing will that grace be if you find the ways to be an agent of it, to serve the hurting world.

In a world without end, may it be so.