Sermons

The Exploitation Of Progress

Rev. Douglas A Taylor

10-12-03

As much as I don’t like to admit it, I have more in common with the generalizations about my generation than otherwise.  Whenever possible I like to think that because I married and had children at a young age I have somehow jumped off the main track, and am therefore outside the standard by which my generation is labeled.  Add to that our decision to home school and my vocation in Unitarian Universalist ministry, I like to think I’ve neatly side-stepped every possible stereotype or generalization about any group with which I am associated.  But it’s just not true.  I am a member of the Generation X according to most definitions.  I missed the tail end of being a Baby Boomer by just a few years.  Generation X, according to most definitions, starts a year or two before 1970 and goes through 1980 or maybe 1985.  There is some contention about the dates and who really fits where, but generally, we come in right after the Baby Boomers wrap up.  When you hear people talking about “Young Adults” age 18 – 35 or age 24 – 35, that’s where the Generation X is right now.

The main point of drawing generational boundaries is to be able to catagorize the different groups and make generalizations about them, whether accurate or not, so marketers will know who their target audience is.  “GenXers” are characterized as politically disengaged and socially apathetic.  Not that they are overly materialistic and money-hungry though, they seem to be ambivalent in that race as well.  Analysis of what is behind this characteristic of disengagement tends to turn up essays about cynicism and distrust of the social and political systems.

So this is where I find myself connecting with the other people in my generation.  I identify with the motivation for the disengagement even though I am not disengaged.  I recognize within myself the frustration slouching toward apathy in regard to the dysfunctional government which is “serving” the American people today.  And though it be tempered by my faith in humanity, I know the impulse to write off the majority of society as a assemblage of self-absorbed materialistic people who are overly-focused on whatever their televisions tell them is important.  The stereotypical perspective of a GenXer is quite jaded and not altogether hopeful.

And yet there is something to that point of view.  It does seem like at some point the lofty ideals of independence, self-rule and the American Dream became a base desire on the part of each individual just to “get my share and then some.”  The high ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness became truncated into just the unfettered pursuit of happiness, (except what constitutes “happiness” is more and more regularly defined for us by interest groups and product marketers.)   I have days when I really do think like this.  The cynicism has a certain attractiveness.  Thankfully days like these are rare, but they do occur.  Usually, I waver around a more nuanced and realistic (though admittedly hopeful) impression of our current situation.

And then we bump into a holiday for flag-waving and store-wide sales of specially marked items.  We bump into Columbus day.  I bump into Columbus day with that Generation X-style jaded view.  It seems to me there are certain holidays on the calender that serve only two functions, they create an extra long weekend and an opportunity for stores to have a sale.  The distinctive purposes of these “lesser” holidays seems to have faded in the mind of the average consumer.  But these holidays did each have, at one point, a reason.  Columbus Day is intended to be a celebration remembering the great accomplishments of Christopher Columbus who discovered the New World.  I bump into Columbus Day and recall its distinctive purpose with a good bit of ambivalence.

Columbus, or at least the history book version of Columbus, embodies many of the reasons for my generations critical dissatisfaction with politics and society.  Columbus sailed across the Atlantic in search of the eastern shores of Asia.  He arrived among what we now know as the Caribbean Islands, though to his death he contended that he had landed on the islands just east of Asia.  He established the first lasting European presence in the Americas and started the flow of materials across the ocean between the New and Old Worlds.  He also brought Spanish colonialism and war to the native peoples as well as European strains of disease.  And within a few short years, there was also a standard form of European feudalism in which the native population were the peasantry.  Within a generation whole tribes were wiped out, untold numbers of people dead or subjected to Spain’s imperialistic desires.

The legacy of Christopher Columbus demonstrates how the noble goal of discovery can result in an egregious transgression against humanity.  He was a child of his times and he carried the conqueror’s ideology in his heart.  He saw his actions as progress.  He not only opened up the lands for new settlement and new resources for the old country, he did so for God and King.  Today, with an appreciation of the consequences of his actions, it is difficult to still honor the good and heroic elements of his story.  But I shall not attempt to redeem him this morning.  That is neither my task nor my wish.  Instead, Columbus Day Weekend is the starting point for my jaded, though hopeful, reflections on progress and discovery and the ways in which good ideas can sometimes become tools of destruction.

I was reminded of a bit of wisdom when I read the Letters to the Editor in yesterday’s paper. These are the “things that destroy us: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity and worship without sacrifice.  At least it is something to think about.”  I would add ‘progress and discovery without regard for consequences’ to that list this morning.  The way we go about discovering and progressing is in a significant way, more important than the discovery or the progress.

Personal progress is easy to get a handle on.  It typically involves making more money, or getting a better education or a job promotion (which usually means making more money.)  A broader sense of progress, progress as a society, is a little harder to define and measure; but it can be done.  Societal progress has been defined differently by different societies and at different times.  In the Middle-Ages, societal progress was defined as moral progress and the church was afforded enormous powers.  In Columbus’s time it was defined as the spread of Christianity and Kingdoms.  When the United States was formed people saw our salvation in a pure democratic government.  We considered ourselves on the cutting edge of progress because we had the best form of government.  At other times in our history military might, or education, or financial prosperity were the measure of progress.  Lately it seems technology has been where much of our energy has gone.  If only we could break through the next level of technological advance, (this line of thinking tells us,) we, as a people, will experience such progress.  As computers get smaller, buildings get bigger, and cell phones expand options and extras, the potential for progress is blooming!

At least, that is what we tell ourselves.  But I wonder, have we hit upon another moment where we are neglecting consequences, blinded by the dazzling possibilities of technological progress?  Now, I’m not a Ludite, I do believe technology has given and continues to give us great things and much progress.  Advances in medical technology and in the information sciences are amazing.  It is hard to argue against these advances.  This is progress.

The positive and negative consequences of some areas of advancement are not so clear.  There are some things which I hesitate to complain against, but still wonder about.  The ‘spell check’ on my word processor is a really wonderful technology, but I wonder if I might have become a better speller as an adult if I didn’t have ‘spell check.’  Did this progress of technology somehow stifle my growth?  This is but a minor curiosity rather than a concern of any significance.  There are more interesting and significant issues available.

Cloning and genetic modification are areas of progress which are still getting debate.  The realistic consequences of cloning are likely much tamer than the predictions made by Science Fiction novelists and conspiracy theory afficionados.  And yet I wonder if we could tinker with our genetic make-up to the point that we create something other than human.  Because I trust that if we could, some attempt would be made at it.  I’m not sure what it would take for genetic tinkering to cross that line, this may be the next great battleground between science and religion (or among religions.)  For now the possibilities offer much good as we progress along in this field of science.  However, the consequences of this are not fully realized, we would do well to proceed with care.

Other examples of technological progress with mixed blessings, both inane like spell check and profound like cloning, abound.  Certainly technology is not the only area of progress to be concerned over.  We’ve been eroding our environmental treasures in the name of progress for many decades.  The old Joni Mitchell tune “big Yellow Taxi” which starts out “Paved paradise, put up a parking lot,” was a big hit again recently.  The message still resonates.  Many families have both parents working, not for equality or independence on the part of one spouse or the other, but simply to make ends meet.  Then day care centers do a significant amount of the raising of our children and we call it progress.  But all this is not quite what I am after this morning.  I don’t worry about major ethical questions created from social or scientific progress because I know they will be debated and explored.  What has me upset is the lack of conversation around what all this progress has done to the general attitude of our society.

The idea of progress is so alluring.  We love to have progress.  One could almost say our most remarkable progress is in the area of progress itself.  We have so much of it now.  And here is where I think we bump into trouble: We have so much progress so quickly.  We have become impatient for progress.  We don’t like to wait.  The book, Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything by James Gleick talks about this sort of thing.  He makes the point that people who design new technologies know that the public is impatient for the next new thing.

New roads aren’t being built fast enough to meet the volume of traffic or anticipated traffic, and we are impatient about the roads rather than wondering why we all need so many cars.  Fast food restaurants, (and I’m using the term ‘restaurant’ loosely here,) have sometimes set up express lanes, and people grow impatient at how long it takes to get through the drive-thru; but only recently have we begun to wonder about the American trend toward obesity and unhealthy diets. Cell phones and computers are outdated within a year or less after they hit the market.  And people are used to this now and accept it.  Indeed some are impatient at how slow new stuff comes available.  We think we have progress; but as Gleick tries to tease out in his book, in the name of progress, our shared cultural values have become efficiency and convenience.  (So much for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.)  We talk about how the latest new batch of technological gizmos are great because they either are smaller or work faster.  They are efficient.  They make us efficient.  They are convenient.  In some senses they make us convenient.

When societal progress was measured by our moral progress, the dominant social values were piety and charity.  When it was measured by our governmental progress, the dominant social values were a strong work ethic and staunch independence.  Now we find ourselves measuring our progress as a society by how portable our computers are and how many different ringer songs we can program into our cell phones.  Our dominant social values seem to be efficiency and progress.  We find ourselves caught in a cycle of wanting faster connections and more information more quickly, so we enlist the aid of a number of time-saving devices and convenient technologies.  But instead of getting relief, these only heighten our need for more.  Insatiable impatience is one of the major consequences of this progress.

Now really!  What is the rush?  Surely there are more important things in our lives besides efficiency.  I sometimes wish I could issue a nationwide mandatory deep breath.  I recently taught Piran, our toddler, to take a deep breath.  He’ll be running around the room and getting wound up right before bed time, and I’ll get his attention and then do this (deep breath.)  Then he’ll look at me with a big grin like this is a new game and he’ll go (deep breath.)  It works.  He actually calms down.  Unfortunately, a communal deep breath would only help for a short time if at all.  But that may just be the jaded and cynical interpretation common to my generation coming out.  There has been, after all, a documented increase in religion and spirituality.  Maybe our society is trying to find a way to take a communal deep breath.  Maybe we are trying to figure out how to slow down.

Perhaps the best help for this situation, this seemingly unnoticed increase in impatience and its connection to our progress, would be to look to some of the other values in our society and try to encourage those.  Maybe the best any of us can do is recognize when we feel trapped in the impatience born of progress and take that deep breath or help someone else to.  It’s worth a try.

In a World without end,

May it be so

Have an Easy Fast

A Yom Kippur sermon

Rev. Douglas Taylor

10/5/03

“Now is the time for turning.  The leaves are beginning to turn from green to red and orange.  The birds are beginning to turn and are heading once more toward the South.  The animals are beginning to turn to storing their food for the winter.  For leaves, birds, and animals turning comes instinctively.”  Thus begins a reading full of imagery about autumn, but this is just the lead in.  The reading is about Yom Kippur, but it begins by showing how the natural world just turns because that is part of what it means to be the natural world.  The reading goes on, “But for us turning does not come easily.  It takes an act of will for us to make a turn.  It means breaking with old habits.  It means admitting that we have been wrong; and that is never easy.  It means losing face; it means starting over all over again; and this is always painful.  It means saying: I am sorry.  It means recognizing that we have the ability to change.  These things are hard to do.  But unless we do turn, we will be trapped forever in yesterday’s ways.”  (from hymnal, #634, Jack Riemer)

A predominant theme in the Yom Kippur season is that of turning.  Turning from callousness and indifference, turning from pettiness and hostility.  Turning and returning to that which is holy, that which is good.  Turning back to our best selves.  “Now is the time for turning.”

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the holiest day of the Jewish year.  It comes as the tenth day of the Days of Awe, the first day of which is Rosh Hashanah, the new year.  The ten days of the new year are called the Days of Awe because people feel fear as well as reverence during this special time of judgment and forgiveness.  Yom Kippur, in particular is a day of fasting, of self-reflection, and of seeking and offering forgiveness.

One of the techniques of spiritual cleansing is fasting.  Many people celebrate Yom Kippur by take no food or water from sunset to sunset.  This year, Yom Kippur begins at sunset tonight and lasts through to sunset tomorrow.  A common greeting on at this time is “Have an easy fast.”  Fasting is a spiritual practice common to many religious groups.  I used to wonder why people still put themselves through this physically denying spiritual practice, until I found the following quote in (of all places,) a Christian Spirituality book by Marjorie Thompson.  “In ancient Jewish tradition,” she writes, “fasting had two primary purposes.  The first was to express personal or national repentance for sin. …  The second purpose of a fast was to prepare oneself inwardly for receiving the necessary strength and grace to complete a mission of faithful service in God’s name.”  Nowadays people generally see fasting as somewhat senseless, even repugnant.  Images of ascetic abuse through this life-denying, restrictive spirituality linger in the public mind.  But many who fast do so with moderation and find it to be a time of reflection on life and on that which sustains us spiritually in the way that food sustains us physically.  In previous years I have fasted (of food only, I’ll still took water) from sunset on Yom Kippur through until the next evening.  I already know that my schedule this evening and tomorrow is not going to allow me to fast, but as a semi-observant non-Jew, I will find a sunset to sunset this coming week during which I will fast this year.  I encourage any of you who are in decent health to fast for Yom Kippur.  Perhaps you will find you need to take part in this in some modified way, as I am.  If at all possible, try it and see what it is like.  The topic for our reflection is forgiveness.

Forgiveness is one of the major themes of Yom Kippur. There is a prevalent story about forgiveness that has a way of turning up in UU minister’s columns about this time of year.  In the story a humble shopkeeper sits down to make a list of all his misdeeds and sins over the course of the year, a common activity during the ten Days of Awe for observant Jews.  At the same time, however, the shopkeeper made a second list as well, detailing the woes in the world attributable to God.  When he finished he looked at the two lists and said out loud.  “All right.  I was not honest about the freshness of that fruit I sold last month, but you let that little girl down the street die from disease.  I let my temper get the best of me when I was talking with my brother, but you created mosquitoes.  I took your name in vain when I hit my thumb with the hammer, but that storm a few weeks back ruined a lot of the crops of the farmers in this area. …”  And on it went until at last the shop keeper said, “So I’ll tell you what; If you’ll forgive me, I’ll forgive you.  We’ll call it even and start fresh with the new year.”

This wonderful little story got me thinking.  First, about the tenacity often found in Jewish stories.  I love that.  The other thing that struck me was that this is the holiest day of the year for the Jewish people, and they spend it going through the remarkably difficult task of moral inventory and the seeking and offering of forgiveness.  Every year!  In a sense, Yom Kippur is Judgment day, and it comes every year.

I met a Unitarian professor once who shared the following outline of his own spiritual discipline.  He said that before he went to bed, he would pour himself a cognac, sit in his big easy chair with the lights low sipping his drink, and he would think back on the day and try to see the ways in which the things he had said and done that day had hurt someone, or caused another pain. And he would also think on the things others had said or done which he had found hurtful.  And then he would say a little prayer of forgiveness and go to bed, knowing that tomorrow would be a new day.  I have found that one can even do this daily ritual without the alcoholic drink.

As Unitarian Universalists we often say that every day is a new day, and that the beloved community is something we live for in the present.  If this is truly our belief, we must accept, therefore, that every day is also judgment day.  We ought not put off to another day the important matters of the soul.  Most of us, however, do not have the time and the where with all to do a daily personal moral inventory.  So when an opportunity such as Yom Kippur presents itself, we would do well to take heed.

With this in mind, I have begun to make my list for this year.  Before I started doing this for Yom Kippur, the closest I ever got to this kind of personal moral inventory was when I would list my strengths and weaknesses during some of those soul-searching times of seminary.  But weaknesses are not necessarily sins or moral misdeeds.  My weaknesses are things like, “I need to improve my self-care skills.  I have poor organizational skills.  I have trouble asking for help when I’m in over my head.”  These are not moral issues.  Nowhere does it say “Thou shalt not write thy phone messages on little scraps of paper and then lose them.  To lose your little scraps of paper is an abomination before me.”  It doesn’t say that.

This moral self-inventory people go through during the Days of Awe are about specific actions, not general character flaws.  We need to push ourselves with questions like, “was I honest in my dealings with other people, was I greedy, did I think of the needs of others, was I kind?”  How about the commandments.  Have I broken any of the commandments?  If my wife says I have a few gray hairs and I say, “No I just have some hair going blond.”  Is that a sin?  Is it lying, as in “thou shalt not bear false witness”É”Even unto thy whiskers”?

Part of making this list is figuring out just what goes on the list.  Lingering animosity toward a family member; a grudge against a coworker or a neighbor; displays of disrespect to your parents, your boss, your children; and any special promises made and not kept:  All this and the like would go on a person’s list.

Let me tell you another story told during this season.  This is about what is happening in heaven during the Days of Awe.  One of the ways people used to speak of God was to say God is like a king or a judge.  This was a helpful way for the people to understand God.  A story grew from this concept of God as a judge.  In the story there is a heavenly court where two angels act as lawyers for the people.  Senegor, the good angel defends the people.  Kategor, who was the HaSatan, accuses the people.

HaSatan, incidentally, it the title of a member of the Persian court.  The role of the HaSatan was to present opposition to all of the king’s proposals.  This was to help the king see where he might be going wrong.  Something he might otherwise not see with everyone else in the court trying to please the king and make the king feel smart and special and all that.  So, surrounded by “yes men,” the King had the HaSatan to test the proposals.  The HaSatan was, in our modern vernacular, the devil’s advocate.  This court figure became a part of the heavenly court and we see him in Hebrew scripture (which some of you will know as the Old Testament.)  He is in the Book of Job, only he is missing the first syllable of his title and is know from then on a Satan.

Back to the story.  Each year there are three books open before God.  The Book of Life, the Book of Death, and the Book of Judgment.  The names of good and saintly people are already inscribed for the year in the Book of Life.  The names of the wicked are already inscribed for the year in the book of death.  All the rest of us have our names listed in the third book, the Book of Judgment.  Throughout the ten-day period known as the Days of Awe, each person’s name comes up for review.  Senegor argues that the name should go into the Book of Life.  Kategor wants it to be entered into the Book of Death.  The books remain open for the whole ten days, and people spend this time confessing, atoning, and repenting to help assure that their name will be found in the Book of Life for another year.  Nothing is final until the books are sealed shut at the end of Yom Kippur.  So you have until Monday evening.  Now, I don’t want you to get too worried about this because the story holds that Kategor has never won a case.  But then, Kategor is clever and catches good people in their daily life.  Many a person, it is said, has lost their life to evil ‘though their names had been in the Book of Life.  One accounting Rabbis have offered to try to explain evil is to say that God created a wonderful world and it is up to us to find a way to end evil.

Stories like this one spur people to act on the lists they have made.  Making a list is not enough.  To get to forgiveness, there are a few more steps involved.  Forgiveness is not an easy thing to grasp intellectually; nor is it easy to follow through with in daily life.  In previous years, it has been one of the most trying lessons for my children.  Forgiveness really involves three steps: confession, atonement, and repentance.

Confession:  First you must admit to what errors you have made over the course of the year.  Maybe it is just a list of names, maybe it is a more detailed list.  Making this list, either mentally or in a journal or in a letter, is a powerful cleansing activity.

Second, Atonement: You need to follow through on your list.  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.”  Now is the time of turning.  Now is the time of reconciliation.  It doesn’t do you any good to hold onto your anger and animosities against others for long times.  Let it go.  I’m not saying, “let people be mean to you” or “let others walk all over you;” but there comes a time when your anger towards others is hurtful to your own soul.  Let it go.  Maybe you will burn you list in a small fire and say a little prayer to God, to the universe, to yourself, saying, “I am sorry, forgive me.  I forgive you.”  And further, to atone, to be ‘at one,’ we may need to do more than just say “sorry.”  Sometimes we need to make amends.  Often, people will perform service to atone with God and themselves; service such as donating money to charity, visit the sick and imprisoned, feeding the hungry.

Often making amends leads into the third step to forgiveness, which is Repentance.  We promise ourselves we will return to the path of goodness.  We promise ourselves to not repeat the wrongs that were on our list this year.  As the leaves are beginning to turn colors and the birds are starting to turn to warmer climates, so too, we turn inward to consider the process of forgiveness:  Confession, Atonement, and Repentance. We promise to return to our best selves.

In world without end

May it may so

Designing Your Own Religion

Rev. Douglas Taylor

9-28-03

A few years ago I was sitting in a Portland, Oregon coffee shop with an old friend catching up.  This was a friend who had grown up with me in the church, was my best friend, had been the best man at my wedding, and is the godfather of my two older kids.  We hadn’t seen each other in a while, and it was great that I was in town for some conference or another and we had this chance.  We talked about what has been going on for each of us over the past few years.  We talked about mutual friends and memories of younger days.  We had not really had a chance to talk like this since I began ministry.  He asked me how that was going and he said, “Yeah, I don’t know.  I’ve been thinking I might need to go back to church.”  He smiled, like he was suddenly embarrassed and this was confession time. “Why?” I asked, resisting the scripted part I was supposed to play where I encourage my friend strongly to return to church, he makes promises, we part company, and nothing changes.

So instead, I ask, “Why?  Why do you think you might need to go back to church?”  My friend hemmed and hawed a bit before saying something about how church would help him figure out how all the different stuff in his life fit together.  My friend grew up as a Unitarian Universalist, but he is still one of those vast number of souls out there who are hungering for something spiritual, but are uncertain how to get it or whether it is a hunger that can be served within organized religion, even within an organized religion as disorganized as ours tends to be.  But here we are and lots of people come searching.

There is a noticed increase nationwide in church attendance across denominations over the past ten years.  The Pew Research Council put out a survey on this recently and when compared with earlier data, we Americans show a marked increase in membership to religious institutions.  People like my old friend are longing for richer connections and yearning for deeper meaning.

Well, journalists and editors over at the local newspaper, Press & Sun Bulletin, picked up on this trend and ran a series of articles focusing on “how people approach religion, what they get from it, and how it affects their daily lives.”  Over the course of last year starting in September of 2002 there have been ten major articles touching on differing aspects of Southern Tier religious life.  We Unitarian Universalists were noted and quoted a few times.  There was an article on “Church Shopping around the Holiday times” and one on “Politics in the Pulpit,” both of which referred to our congregation and contained a quote or two from the Rev. David Leonard.  And then finally, in the last article of the series, we became the feature rather than just an additional perspective.  The headline was, as you can see in the order of service where I used this as the reading, “Designing Your Own Religion.”  The second page headline of the article goes a step further, it says, “Designing your own religion isn’t easy –“

It was a great article, I mean, from a public relations perspective, it doesn’t get better than having the new minister quoted in the paper on his first official day in the pulpit!  There was a big attractive picture of the church on the front of the Lifestyle section, the smiling face of one of our members featured prominently in that same picture as well as in the banner on the front page of the A section.  It was good publicity.  Now, that said, I will start to complain a little bit.  The point of an article such as this is to highlight something most people would find interesting, but have not likely ever heard of; something unusual.  I think we do seem pretty unusual to mainstream religious folks.  Most church-going people would find it remarkably unusual to read about a congregation where each person is not only allowed, but also expected, to have very different beliefs, which don’t conform to any of the regular creedal statements.  Most, non-church-going folks have some idea from television and movies what church is supposed to look like, and this ain’t it.

Now, we are different in some fairly significant ways from the mainstream religious culture.  A recent billboard and bumper sticker advertising campaign in the mid-west has characterized Unitarian Universalism as the “Uncommon Denomination.”  But I wonder sometimes if the ways in which we are different translates well or if we just end up looking like an oddity; a rare blip of weird on the radar screen of religions.

I imagine there were quite a few questions bouncing around in people’s heads after that article.  Questions like, “If you don’t have any sacred text or shared beliefs, do you each just make it up for yourself?”  Or, to word it as it has been phrased before, “Can you believe anything you want?”  Another question might be, “If you each believe your own thing, why do you bother being a group together?”  Another version of that might be, “If it isn’t beliefs or scripture, then what is at the center of your worship service?”  And I imagine many people wondered,  “Just what is a Mobius Strip?”

As best as I can explain it, it all rests on the freedom of conscience.  One religious leader once wrote that conscience is a gift from God and cannot be coerced.  When I talk of “Conscience” in this way, I am not talking about the “Jiminy Cricket” kind of Moral Conscience by which one is able to tell right from wrong morally.  Most people talk about conscience along those lines when they say some criminal has no conscience or when a child has a guilty conscience about having stolen a piece of candy.  That’s not quite what is meant by this phrase Freedom of Conscience.  I don’t mean freedom of Moral Conscience.

Religious Conscience is similar to that inner moral judgment, only broader.  It is an inner light, an inner knowledge of sorts, similar to intuition or reason.  It rarely has anything to do with guilt.  It has more to do with belief.  And so, with questions like “If you don’t have any sacred text or shared beliefs, do you each just make it up for yourself?”  And “Can you believe anything you want?”  We respond: no, we do not believe as we want, we believe as we must.  We believe as our conscience demands.  It is not that we totally ignore all the conclusions and answers ever arrived at and written down, it is simply that answers from the past are not the final arbiter of truth among us.

You tell me which makes more sense: believing only what an organization tells you is true, or believing what your conscience within you tells you is true.  If your deep personal beliefs are about the same as the statements of faith read out at the place where you worship, then all is well.  But if your conscience and the creeds of your congregation are in conflict then you’ve got an issue.  In too many religious groups if there is a conflict between traditional sacred beliefs and an individual’s conscience, the individual must either alter his or her conscience somehow or leave the group.  In too many religious groups if there is a conflict between beliefs and reality, all attempts are made to adjust reality to fit the beliefs.  Here, we fit our beliefs to reality.

This is what we mean by Freedom of Conscience.  Each person’s way of accessing that which is holy is as unique as a fingerprint.  There is not a “right way” to do it.  Instead, each person has her or his way to do it.  If your conscience leads you to believe in God in a way that is inconsistent with mainstream doctrines and traditional beliefs, you are welcome here.  If your conscience leads you to remain uncertain about God, you are welcome here.  If your conscience leads you to reject the concept of God in favor of other life-giving interpretations, you are welcome here.  If you are a seeker of a new faith, if you are coming home again, if you are a weary spirit in need of rest, you are welcome here.  As it was written in the opening words Debby and I read at the beginning of our time together, “Whoever you are, whatever you are, wherever you are on your journey, we bid you welcome.” (SLT, #422)  We pitch a large tent here, metaphorically.  (The tent outside this morning for the book sale is a pretty big tent, but our metaphorical tent is bigger.)  It is hard to be an extremist here because we contain such a breadth of theological diversity.

This leads into the next question I imagined might come from this article three weeks ago.  “If you each believe your own thing, why do you bother being a group together?”  Another version of that might be, “If it isn’t beliefs or scripture, then what is at the center of your worship service?”  Indeed this is a significant question.  Unlike the first question I imagined, which uncovered a basic misunderstanding about external vs. internal sources of truth, this question points to a very real struggle for us.

I’m reading a book now for an interfaith religious study group here in town.  The book is Beyond Belief by Elaine Pagels.  The chapter I’m in now is about the Gospel of Thomas, which is sometimes known as the Gnostic Gospel.  Specifically, this chapter addresses the differences between the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of John, both of which were written around the same time.  I stumbled upon a few sentences that I thought were very helpful for this very question.  “Thomas’s gospel encourages the hearer not so much to believe in Jesus, as John requires, as to seek to know God through one’s own, divinely given capacity, since all are created in the image of God.” (p34)  This is where we’ve been already.  This is the spark of divine within each soul that the Quakers talk about.  This is the Kingdom of God within that theologians wrote about in the Middle Ages.  This is the new covenant written on the heart of which the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah spoke.  This is the freedom to hear God speak to you through your conscience.  This idea is far from new and it shouldn’t be all that radical, but it is.  Why?  Well, the next sentence in that book goes on with this:  “For Christians in later generations, the Gospel of John helped provide a foundation for a unified church, which Thomas, with its emphasis on each person’s search for God, did not.”(Ibid)  So, you can see a hint here as to why one version made it into the Bible and the other did not.

It is admittedly difficult to provide a foundation for a unified religious organization when we have this emphasis on each person’s individual search of the truth and meaning.  And yet, here we are!  Most religious groups, particularly most Christian groups, gather around particular beliefs.  Unitarian Universalists gather around a shared process of uncovering religious truth.  One way I have characterized us is to say we are covenanting seekers.  A covenant is a religious way of talking about the promises we make to one another, and usually to God as well, about how we will treat one another.  The seven principles from the Principles and Purposes statement are a covenant.  This is not a creed or a faith statement which all assent to.  It is a set of promises we strive toward.  We are covenanting seekers, spiritual pilgrims on the road together helping each other along the way with encouragement and occasional constructive criticism.

Our goal as a religious community is not to teach people the right answers or the correct interpretations.  Our goal is to provide opportunities for engagement with the issues of ultimate and intimate importance in our lives.  So we have a course every now and then, such as “Building Your Own Theology” where people can do the integrative work of drawing deep meaning out of the life experiences they have had.  The image of designing your own religion is not quite accurate because the religion is ours, not yours or mine alone.  Certainly we each have the freedom and responsibility to work out our own beliefs.  The “designing your own” part of that is right.

I have bandied about several metaphors this morning.  We talk about being religion designers and belief builders.  We talk about being seekers and pilgrims.  I even made references to fingerprints and big tents.  The image I like best is that of being on a journey.  I think my headline for us would read: Pilgrims on the Path of Faith.  We may not all be walking down the same path, but we are walking together, and that is what matters.

In a world without end,

May it be so.

No Easy Road

Reverend Douglas A. Taylor
September 14, 2003

Meditation “A Common Destiny” by A. Powell Davies

There are times when I stand aside and wonder at the strangeness of this world of ours. The years of all of us are short, our lives precarious. Our days and nights go hurrying on and there is scarcely time to do the little that we might. Yet we find time for bitterness, for petty treason and evasion. What can we do to stretch our hearts enough to lose their littleness? Here we are — all of us — all of us on this planet, bound together in a common destiny, living our lives between the briefness of the daylight and the dark. Kindred in this, each lighted by the same precarious, flickering flame of life, how does it happen that we are not kindred in all things else? How strange and foolish are these walls that separate and divide us! …. When I think of these things I wonder. I wonder at the patience of God. While the dream still lives in our hearts, God waits. While the vision shines in our eyes, God waits. How long shall we keep God waiting?

Sermon

It is not that hard to be a member of a Unitarian Universalist Church. At most of our churches, all one must do is sign the membership book. This is the case in our congregation. That’s all there is to it. Just call me up, or find me sometime and I act as witness to your signature going in the membership book.  Now, I have heard of some churches that set up a few guidelines to serve as extra steps before signing the book.  But they tend to be in the line of gaining knowledge about our way of faith, and an understanding of what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist; rather than laying out acceptable doctrine or outlining the creeds by which new members are tested.

What I am steering at here is that we have a proud heritage of non-creedal congregational policy. Meaning: there are no tests of membership; no dogma or belief statements to subscribe to before you’re allowed in. And each congregation chooses how that works, there is no over-arching governing body telling every congregation what standards to set up. It’s just the membership book. No, indeed it is not hard at all to be a member of a Unitarian Universalist church. Well, actually to be more accurate, it is not hard to become a member. There is, perhaps a little more involved in being a member. The truth is, ours is no easy way.

I remember a question which came out of one of the New Member orientation days offered at my internship church. Someone, upon hearing the ideals and practices of our religious tradition, our beautifully written principles and purposes, and the litany of famous people connected with our way of faith, asked “Why then, is this denomination so small and unknown?” Indeed, if we are as great as it appears and there are no creedal restrictions on membership, why are we not the biggest show in town? This is not really a new question.

Just over fifty years ago now, Clarence R. Skinner, Universalist minister, educator, and prophetic author, posited that ours was a religion for greatness. In a book by that title, he stated: “The crisis of our age which is one of the most acute in the whole history of [humanity] might well be described as a sudden demand for greatness for which the world is not prepared.” (pp 21-22) He cited global trade and modern interdependent cultures as the context out of which the need of a world community and unity of spirit rises to rid us of our narrow provincialisms. He called on us to rise to this cry, to expand our understanding and sympathy in this radical religion of ours. He called us into greatness.

These are some rather grand marching orders! The implications say that with all the world interconnected and modernized, religion, too, must step up to speed. As other, more exclusive, religious systems are found to be too narrow for today’s globally-conscious individual, our universal way of faith can carry the people forward. At least this seems to be the implication. But before we write Skinner off as another wild-eyed dreamer, it is important to note that his intentions for our religious movement are not otherwise unheard of. Around two hundred years ago, Thomas Jefferson said, from the other branch of our now merged heritage, “The pure and simple unity of the creator of the universe is now all but ascendant in the eastern states, it is dawning in the west and advancing toward the south; and I confidently expect that the present generation will see Unitarianism become the general religion of the United States.” And one of the driving motives for Michael Servitus nigh on four and a half centuries ago was the thought that if he could only show John Calvin the fundamental errors in the concept of the Trinity, then the doctrinal reforms of Servitus would sweep over all of Europe!

And even closer to home, I have often detected a sense from some Unitarian Universalists who have come to us from other faiths that ours is on a higher order than others,…that Unitarian Universalism manifests as a fuller, more informed faith. Indeed the implication here is that our religious movement is great. While I tremble a bit at some of the more arrogant nuances, I do not find Clarence Skinner’s appeal at all unfounded.

I actually agree that we have within us the seeds of greatness. We are a religion that seeks the truth, as it is made known to us. Rather than fixing on any tenet or position, we continually allow truth and meaning to bubble up as it will. Rather than passing on last generation’s formulas and solutions, we hollow out space for the questions to tumble around and new connections to rise. We focus on saving this world through justice-work for today and for all people; not in personal salvation in a “next world” for a special select few who assent to a particular belief. It seems to me as though we are doing everything right. We should have every environmentally-aware, socially-conscious, politically-correct, hip and progressive idealist in a fifty mile radius jumping up and down for a chance to get through those doors and sign our book.

But, why, then, isn’t that happening? Why are we still so relatively unknown? Where is this greatness?

You know, sometimes clues come from the oddest places. For example, there is something in a little book called “The Gospel According to Peanuts” which is illuminating. Linus is sitting there, eating his sandwich, and he becomes a little absorbed in his own hands. “Hands are fascinating things.” He says, “I like my hands, I think I have nice hands. My hands seem to have a lot of character.” Lucy looks up with a puzzled expression while Linus goes on. “These are hands which may someday accomplish great things…. These are hands which may someday do marvelous works…. They may build a mighty bridge, or heal the sick, or hit home runs, or write soul-stirring novels.” And then he turns to Lucy with a flourish saying, “These are the hands which may someday change the course of destiny.” Lucy looks at his hands, looks up at Linus, and says, “They’ve got jelly on them.”

The Rev. Dick Gilbert says in reflecting on this stuff, “We’ve all got jelly on our hands. Not one of us is clean.” He has a point. None of us have really achieved that balance between all that we could be and all that our existential limitations are. This applies to groups as well as individuals. So this is that clue I found. One reason why we are not great despite our potential is that we are failing to properly acknowledge our limitations. We seem to be pretending that there is no jelly on our hands. But I’ll tell you, there is something that is gumming things up.

There are many candidates in the line-up of possible excuses. And we could likely sit together long into the night enumerating and exploring the options,…but that may well be one of our problems.

One rather prominent feature of our way of faith is our Intellectualism. Normally I would list this as an asset. Indeed, modern liberal religion is the heir of the Enlightenment. We Unitarian Universalists in particular embrace the view that the rational mind must be engaged in the quest for the Holy. As William Ellery Channing said, God gave us rational intelligence, we are therefore held accountable to use it. Indeed it was in this very strength that Jefferson saw the seeds of our greatness.

But there are two other characteristics I would have added in a healthy dosage. While we are so rational, intellectual, and enlightened, there are some who forsake the “heart” in worship and still others who ignore the justice needs within the broader community. Now I won’t pretend that these things fall out in our congregations always with such clarity, but these extremes do occur often enough that debates abound. I have never heard a complaint that we don’t investigate something enough, or that we don’t think about and talk about something enough. What I often hear is that we either don’t feel enough or we don’t do enough. And I do believe I have detected a hint of these sentiments, of this debate, even here in our sparkling congregation.

Over the years before I arrived here, I had, in fact, heard some UUs complain about the excessive emphasis of some on social action when the people in our own congregations are experiencing spiritual vacuity. “What good is all this social betterment,” they say, “if our personal and spiritual lives are still empty?” And likewise, I have heard others claiming that all this recent flirtation with spirituality and “feel-good” flakiness is distracting us from the work of the world. “What good is all this navel gazing,” they say, “when our children are killing each other in our schools?”

How strange, indeed, these walls that separate and divide. In the meditation this morning, A. Powell Davies asked “How long shall we keep God waiting?” Indeed I have wondered that myself. A few years back I would have easily located myself in the “Spiritual” camp rather than the “Activist” camp. But as I went further and deeper into my quest for personal transformation and wholeness, I became less and less comfortable with the world around me. The attention I gave to my spiritual life only heightened my awareness of the needs for justice in our world. I now see that the division between those who seek spiritual wholeness and those who seek to meet the needs of justice in our community is quite a flimsy division and an unnecessary one.

About a year ago, my children and I read “The Trumpet of the Swan,” by E. B. White. In it is described how zoo birds are, or at least were at that time, pinioned. The people at the zoo would clip a small portion from the tip of one of the swan’s wings, a painless procedure they say. In this way, however, the bird would meet failure in the attempt to take off because the wings would be unbalanced. No matter how strong the unclipped wing, the bird would remain permanently grounded merely because one wing was longer than the other. Thereby making it impossible for the bird to leave the narrow confines of the zoo environment.

And so, too, if we attempt to clip one wing by focusing too strongly on either spirituality or on social justice, we will continue to find ourselves unable to compensate for the unbalance, and thereby find it impossible to leave the narrow confines of our environment. Our goal, as well as I have ever heard it articulated, is both personal and social transformation. While each alone is a noble and worthy goal, each alone without the other is ultimately unattainable. How can one seek inner wholeness and not see the pain and desolation of the times in which we live. And again, how can one seek to comfort and empower a bruised and battered world and not be deeply affected and personally transformed.

This relationship is poignantly defined by the response I received the first time I preached this sermon. This is a road sermon which I have delivered in several congregations. Indeed, this sermon is roughly the same sermon I delivered during my pre-candidating weekend for the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Binghamton. But the first time I delivered this sermon, a few years ago now, I was visiting a congregation of a colleague in Maryland.  I was unfamiliar with the congregation and the congregation was unfamiliar with me. Specifically, the pianist was unfamiliar with my tendency to preach a relatively short sermon, and she had left the room.  I was running typically about twelve minutes, while she was used to the regular minister’s standard eighteen to twenty minute sermons.  She had left the room thinking she had time to take care of a few things.  Immediately after I finished the sermon, expecting to launch into a rousing rendition of our closing hymn “We’ll Build a Land,” the regular minister, who was up there with me, leaned over and whispered to me, “Stall the congregation, Douglas.” I needed to stall them while he went to find the pianist. He suggested opening up the time for congregational response. So I did. And they responded well.

One question in particular has stayed with me. “In our times,” a young lady began, “when so many of us suffer from Social Justice Attention Deficit Disorder, where people are only willing to commit to short bursts of justice-making, and when there are so many worthy and deserving tasks for my attention, how am I to find what I need to do? I ask because in the face of so much need, I find I freeze up and do nothing. How do I know what to do?”

I did not give her the answer I suspect was most helpful to her, or at least to me. Sure, I stood up there at that pulpit and said stuff, but the articulation came from another member of the congregation that morning. “Pray.” Pray or meditate or think deeply to your center, what ever it is you do, do it. Meditate on yourself, on your passions. Find what you are passionate about, and there you will find an outlet for your ache for activism. Because our goal, our purpose as a faith community is transformation: personal and social transformation.

I am confident that we shall never forsake our intellectual proclivities. But until we bring into the balance the emotionally spiritual aspects and the social justice demands of religion in equal and reciprocal measure, our way of faith will always be stuck in the quagmire of insignificance despite brilliance. But if we can link together the spiritualists and the activists who are so strangely at odds, I believe we may yet be able to achieve the truly great potential that is our movement. Ours is no easy road. Not only do we insist on allowing for different answers, we don’t even agree on the questions. What we have to work with is a shared process of discovery. We are in search for the good and we are in search together.

Benediction

We have a calling in this world.  We are a people of the wide path, the open heart, and the searching mind.  We have a calling to be a beacon of light and truth to the world.  We extinguish the flame of our chalice, but not the flame within each of us that calls us out.