Sermons

Stronger Together

October 16, 2022

Rev. Douglas Taylor

Sermon video: https://youtu.be/v-g4iM2FI2I

Reading:                      Collaboration Reflections                   10-16-22

As a Unitarian Universalist congregation, we have been partnering with other UU congregations lately in unconventional ways. We have been connecting, associating, sharing, mingling, and collaborating with other UU congregations for a few years now. It is exciting and a little counter cultural. There is an assumption in the dominant culture that other churches are the competition. We are not behaving in that way lately.

For our reading this morning, we are invited to hear some reflections on the history of collaboration within our Cortland, Binghamton, and Athens Sheshequin congregations. We will begin with the long view beginning in Athens PA.

Part I               -Katie Replogle

Good morning.  When Rev. Darcey asked me to offer a reflection on the history of collaboration in the Athens/Sheshequin congregation, what came to mind was the similarity between what our three congregations are doing together today and what the regional Universalist Associations did in the 1800s and 1900s.  This morning I am going to share a little about the North Branch Association that the Athens and Sheshequin congregations belonged to during that time.

Universalist congregations began to form Associations about 1800.  The closest to us at that time was the Western Association, which encompassed most of upstate New York.  In 1811 two members of our Sheshequin congregation attended the Western Association meeting in Bainbridge, which is about 80 miles away.  Imagine how long it took for our delegates to travel that distance!

By the 1840s the Western Association had split several times into smaller, more localized associations.  In 1842 the Universalists in Bradford county – where Athens and Sheshequin are – formed the North Branch Association.  By the 1880s the North Branch had nine member congregations.

In the early years, the primary interaction among the member congregations was the annual meeting.  These meetings were usually three-day events which included as many as five worship services as well as business meetings.  One of the things the association did was to help congregations that did not have regular preaching to connect with a minister.

In the second half of the 1800s, as travel became easier, the North Branch congregations were able to interact more frequently.  The Association developed into a strong, supportive community.

When, in the 1880s and 90s, the Sheshequin congregation was faltering, their sibling North Branch congregations came to the rescue.  In 1880 the Towanda minister preached a sermon at Sheshequin on church organization and baptized about 30 adults and children.  In 1895, the ministers of the Athens and Towanda churches held a series of “revival” meetings in Sheshequin, which brought in many new members and got the congregation back on its feet.

By the early 1900s only four congregations remained in the North Branch.  Only one of them could afford a full-time minister.  So in 1914, the North Branch jointly called a single minister to serve all of the churches.  Shared professional ministry continued until about 1990.

Lay groups within the congregations also joined together.  In 1897 the youth groups of the four North Branch churches formed their own association.  A North Branch men’s group was organized in 1932.  And the individual Ladies’ Aid Societies evolved into a county-wide branch of the Association of Universalist Women.

The North Branch held union worship services several times a year, often with music by a “union choir.”  There were also annual North Branch picnics.

Sadly, the North Branch Association ceased to function in the early 2000s, and ours is now the only remaining member congregation in Bradford county.  But our long tradition of partnering continues in this wonderful relationship with our friends in Cortland and Binghamton.

Part II              -Douglas Taylor

Back in the fall of 2015, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Cortland and the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Binghamton began discussions of a formal partnership. We started simply with conversations among leaders about the breadth and expectations of such a partnership. For example, we decided to not look to become one congregation together, but to remain independent while sharing resources. At first it was a little one-sided with the larger Binghamton congregation offering resources to the smaller Cortland church. But over time, that shifted.

Much of the collaboration has happened in our experience of worship. We’ve had pulpit exchanges and we shared musical resources. Binghamton created a library of Rev. Douglas Taylor’s sermons on DVDs for Cortland to use. We also shared adult education resources such as the Soul Matters packets and our annual joint Spirituality Retreats.

When Rev. Darcey Laine began serving the Cortland church in 2018, the Athens and Cortland congregations didn’t know each other at all. And it seemed natural for Cortland to join the

multi-congregation Coming-of-Age which had started with Athens and Big flats, and has over the course of the years also included Binghamton and Ithaca. It seemed natural to invite Athens to be part of the Spirituality retreats. When the pandemic hit, the Athens and Cortland congregations started sharing Sunday worship online together every Sunday. It was during that time our Binghamton – Cortland Collaboration expanded to formally include the Unitarian Universalist Church of Athens & Sheshequin.

Even before the formal agreement, we’ve had pulpit exchanges and choir exchanges and shared classes among the three individual congregations in various ways. There was a regular Treasurers lunch among a handful of church that led to a program of peer audits. And many people have enjoyed the online classes and Small Group Ministry sessions we’ve been doing during the pandemic as multi-congregational offerings.

Today, we still plan to remain three district Unitarian Universalist congregations. But we are in covenant to support one another that we all may thrive. Today, we celebrate our collaboration and the ways we serve our Unitarian Universalist faith together in new and exciting ways.

—

Sermon: Stronger Together October 16, 2022; Rev. Douglas Taylor

I stumbled across this quote recently: “Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else.” I have heard this sentiment from naturalists and environmentalists certainly, also from historians and physicists and systems theoreticians. “Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else.” This particular wording, however, I found labeled as a quote from Buddhism. It is, of course, no surprise to you that I offer this sentiment as a religious or spiritual message. “Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else.”

Our relational interdependence is a prominent feature of our spiritual existence. This is a topic I approach from the pulpit with some regularity, I know. At least in terms of how we as individuals can engage with other individuals across our individual differences. Today I would speak of how your spiritual community can be in relationship with other spiritual communities in mutually supportive ways.

It isn’t always like that. What I am suggesting is a little counter-cultural. There is a thing we do when we form groups together. We have a drive to belong that leads us to build our belonging with borders that create an in-group and an out-group. It’s hard. It’s a basic aspect of group dynamics – some people are in the group and some people are not. We love our little congregational community, we ae special and beautiful people. Being part of the group is important and means something about those of us in the group.

But it’s hard because it also implies something about those not in the group. And even when our theology calls us to honor that specialness and beauty of all the people even if they aren’t members of our group … it is still hard.

I do hope it is a little surprising to learn that Unitarian Universalists congregations have at times been a little exclusive in our groupings. We have, at times, seen each other as rivels. We would, at times, speak of how this or that minister was poaching members from other congregations. Or how a small congregation was floundering and the neighboring congregations would cluck their tongues and say “tut-tut,” but then do nothing to offer support.

The patterns are changing. But for a long stretch of time our free congregations so loved our autonomous and independent nature that we neglected our covenants of mutual support among congregations. It is a feature of Unitarian Universalism that we run by Congregational Polity – which is usually a happy side note but occasionally arises as a very important and even distinctive aspect of our way of faith.

Congregational Polity, in short, means each Unitarian Universalist congregation is independent. But it is more than that. We take this as a religious precept; not merely as an interesting governing happenstance. Just as you are free to develop your faith, freely and independently – to believe as you must; each congregation is likewise free and independent.

Now we do have an association of congregations – the UUA – and yes, there is real value to be found in our association. We have support staff and programs that help Unitarian Universalism thrive. Honestly, I and other leaders in our congregation have been in recent contact with representatives of the UUA receiving good support.

But that body, the UUA, has no authority over how a congregation runs. Other forms of polity – episcopal, hierarchical, or presbyterian – have some group beyond the gathered congregation that will determine issues such as: which clergy will serve where, what topics can be discussed from the pulpit, which justice issues are important, and who is allowed to get married, baptized, ordained, or buried with ecclesiastical blessing.

Our Congregational Polity essentially says “each congregation decides all of that for themselves.” As I say, it is usually a happy side note until it suddenly becomes very important. So, with all this independence and autonomy, we Unitarian Universalists have in the past fallen into the pattern of not offering mutual support to our neighboring congregations. We might say, for example: that other congregation is doing its own thing and we have promised not to meddle. But that is not quite what we have promised. As I say, it can be hard.

Of course, Unitarian Universalists are not the only religious group that runs by Congregational Polity. Interestingly, most of those that do in the United States harken back to an old document written in the mid 1600’s called the Cambridge Platform. 

The story behind this Cambridge Platform is interesting. A group of settlers from Europe were all in the same area of Massachusetts and decided they wanted to start a church together. They arranged to hold a year-long series of gatherings to talk about how to do that. You might think they talked about points of doctrine: what will our stance be on salvation and sin, grace and predestination? But no. In their meetings they talked about matters of civil society – how to be a community together. They were committed to be a “church gathered by mutual consent rather than by mutual belief.” https://www.uua.org/re/tapestry/adults/river/workshop8/175948.shtml

Now, these religious communities from almost 375 years ago were certainly not Unitarian or Universalist. That part had to wait a few hundred years. But the point is not what they did or did not believe, the point is how they organized their congregations. Although, it may be interesting to note: Of the 65 congregations that voted to ratify the [Cambridge]Platform in 1648, 21 are members of the Unitarian Universalist Association today. (ibid)

My point is this: we have a long, proud history of this independence. But even way back in the 1648 there was a section devoted to Cooperation Between Churches – or using the language from the document itself, “of the communion of churches one with another.” Even back then we made a point to say, “and we should help the other groups, not just our own group.” And still over the years we slip into patterns of cliquishness and isolation.

But it is like the parable of the bundle of sticks – one stick may be easy enough to break with your bare hands. But several sticks together in a bundle are not easy to break. Alone each stick can be easily snapped. But they are stronger together.

This is true. It is easy to test and verify. And yet it is counter-cultural to cooperate and collaborate. Generations of people promised to do so – making a religious commitment to supporting each other. And it is still hard to follow through on that promise.

And something significant has changed recently. Something different is happening.

If you follow news about trends in religion you may have noticed many religious communities are suffering. Attendance is down. Commitment is flagging. There is doom and there is gloom. Some religious communities, including UU congregations, are questioning how they will keep their doors open given the new reality they are facing.

Of course, we must give a nod to the context of the past two-and-a-half years. The pandemic, with the business shut downs and social distancing, has heightened our awareness of the lines of isolation and connection in our lives. This pandemic has put quite a strain on religious communities. But well before this pandemic we’ve been aware of walls of division and the harmful ways we pretend at independence. There has been a trend away from religious affiliation and attendance growing for some time. This isn’t new.

I am reminded of the wisdom from a progressive thinker and pastor Cary Nieuwhof who said that a crisis such as this pandemic “is not just a disruptor, it’s an accelerator.” https://careynieuwhof.com/the-original-2020-is-history-7-new-disruptive-church-trends-every-church-leader-should-watch/ The implication being that this pandemic has amplified and accelerated changes that are already underway.

I invite you to hear that with some excitement. I know there are warnings out there about how congregations need to pivot and be nimble and synergize the emerging paradigm. I’m here to be excited about how we already are. “Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else.”

As we heard in the reading this morning, the Athens and Binghamton and Cortland congregations have been in this work of mutual support for a while now. Reaching beyond the usual borders of our congregational lines has helped us all remain nimble in the midst of this pandemic upheaval. We are stronger together. We’ve been sharing resources, staying in communication, and showing up online with each other over this hard time. Rev. Darcey Laine helped me remember a relevant story from India.

There was once a flock of birds peacefully pecking seeds under a tree. A hunter came along and threw a heavy net over them. He said, “Aha! Now I have my dinner!”

All at once the birds began to flap their wings. Up, up they rose into the air, taking the net with them. They came down on the tree and, as the net snagged in the tree’s branches, the birds flew out from under it to freedom.

The hunter looked on in amazement, scratched his head and muttered, “As long as those birds cooperate with one another like that, I’ll never be able to capture them! Each one of those birds is so frail and yet, together they can lift the net.”

We are stronger together.

I was talking with a few UU colleagues this weekend about all this. We were talking specifically about the ways we’ve been sharing across our usual congregational borders during this pandemic. Zoom has made so much possible. This expanding mutual support is not only happening in our little corner of the world.

I heard stories of how one colleague had people from 3 or 4 different congregations reading through the Tao Te Ching with him online weekly over the past two years. I heard about how the Saratoga Springs and the Schenectady congregations are sharing a UU the Vote campaign together; and about how the Syracuse congregations included the Canton congregation in their Coming-of-Age program. It feels very much like the Soul Matters sessions we’ve been sharing as Athens, Binghamton, and Cortland, and all the other things we’ve been doing together. All of these UUs reaching out in mutual support across their normal congregational lines. It is heartening.

“Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else.” We are stronger together. Many of us participated in the class offer by John Buehrens on the history of the transcendentalists – a class made possible through the Rochester Unitarian church. One point of feedback we heard then and hear often is not about the content of the offering but about how good it is – how heartening it is – to participate with people outside our own congregations at these offerings.

We are lifting the net for each other. Alone, each congregation has been struggling, caught in the net of this pandemic. But together we help each other get free. Our sharing across these congregational borders is a blessing at every turn. The UUs in Syracuse want our congregation in Cortland to thrive. The UUs in Schenectady want the UUs in Binghamton to be strong. It is a practical example of what we call collective liberation – a theological outlook that says I am not free until my neighbor is also free. We can lift the net together.

This is will grow. This new way of sharing will continue and will bless our communities into the future. We are not alone. We are stronger together. This sometimes counter-cultural practice of mutual support will bless us in the offering and receiving. We can lift the net together.

In a world without end,

May it be so.

This Earth, This Spirit

(Salvation in the Wilderness ’13)

Rev. Douglas Taylor

October 9, 2022

Sermon video: https://youtu.be/tnEKaquJNWo

William Cullen Bryant was an American romantic poet from the 1800’s; he has a poem “Green River” that begins, “When the breezes are soft and skies are fair, I steal an hour away from study and care, and hie me away to the woodland scene.” Me? I stole more than an hour; I had a whole day. Friday afternoon I did hie me and my family away to the wilderness for some soft breeze and woodland scene – for some relief of the kind only wild places can provide.

Yesterday I was up at Camp Unirondack, our Unitarian Universalist camp and conference center in the forever wild forests of the western Adirondack mountains. Unirondack is one of the sacred locations of my youth. I attended summer camp every year for many years leading up to the summer I was old enough to work up there as a counselor. I returned ten years after that summer to work two summers in a row as the camp chaplain while I was finishing seminary. That was when my older children first experienced Unirondack. They have also kept a close connection to the place ever since.

My family connection extends further. My mother attended Unirondack as a youth, indeed she was a camper the first year they opened in 1951. As an adult she offered programs and served on the Board. And stretching in the other generational direction, we brought our granddaughter up for her first visit this weekend just a little over half-a-year old.

Unirondack has been a sacred place for me not only during my youth but all my life. Do you have a place, perhaps a wilderness or a garden, some patch of nature upon which you can rely? Do you have a Quiet Place such as we heard about in the story this morning (Charlotte and the Quiet Place by Deborah Sosin)?

Bryant’s poem concludes with the lines, “I often come to this quiet place, to breathe the air that ruffles the face, and gaze upon thee in silent dream, for in thy lonely and lovely stream an image of that calm life appears that won my heart in greener years.”

Wilderness is significantly important for human beings because as natural creatures we need nature to help us stay balanced and in touch with our spiritual root. That is my experience of nature and wilderness. It is a touchstone back to balance for me, a taproot of spiritual health, and a resource of relief for my spirit. Wild places are necessary for if we do not seek out wild places in nature then we will not learn the gift they offer to the wild places in our hearts, and we will starve a sacred and necessary aspect of our lives for want of wilderness.

Attending Sunday morning worship is important, to be sure. I am never going to not say Sunday mornings are important. It helps us stay balanced in community. But we also need retreats such as up at a wilderness camp to have transformative, identity-shaping experiences. Hie yourselves to the woods from time to time and be renewed in spirit, that you may be whole.

There is a wonderful misquotation of Thoreau that says: In wildness is the salvation of the world. It comes from that great naturalist Aldo Leopold in his book A Sand County Almanac. In it he wrote, “Perhaps this is behind Thoreau’s dictum: In wildness is the salvation of the world.” (P 133) The line comes in exactly my favorite section of that book, Leopold’s conversion story of killing a wolf and realizing the deep interconnectedness of the mountain and the wolf and the deer and the men. Leopold realized that to survive we would need to learn to think like a mountain. He realized that we humans must learn to see ourselves not as separate from the earth and the other animals. That the wild places need not be tamed, they are necessary and we can learn from them. “Perhaps this is behind Thoreau’s dictum: In wildness is the salvation of the world.”

Except Thoreau never said that, at least not precisely that. The correct quotation comes from Thoreau’s essay, “Walking.” “The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the world.” He had not said ‘salvation,’ he’d said ‘preservation.’ “In Wildness is the preservation of the world.” Preservation is different from salvation. They have similarities to be sure. They both carry the tone of being made whole. Salvation and preservation each signal a sense of a goal both secure and sound. But while salvation rescues and restores that which is unsound back to soundness, that which is broken back to wholeness; preservation maintains and safeguards the wholeness that exists already.

Sometimes I find myself agreeing with Thoreau and other times I agree with Leopold. I’m not always sure. Sometimes I think salvation is not what’s needed, there is nothing fallen or lost; it is all held in the beauty and we need only turn and notice the beauty that has always been there! But other times I think the world has gone mad and there is so much destruction and violence we pour out on each other and on the world that perhaps preservation is not enough. The major environmental issues are not wilderness conservation and the protection of endangered species. Today the issues are about climate crisis – a deep concern for harm that could well be irreparable for the world as we know it.

Whether wildness is the preservation or the salvation of the world perhaps depends on what you see going on in the world; but either way, it is still wildness that is needed. For if we do not have the experience of the wild places in nature then we will not learn the gift they offer to the wild places in our hearts. Those who cry out against climate crisis are invariably those who have felt the touch of nature, who have had their “hearts won” by nature, as Bryant put it.

In various religious scripture and poetry and folklore we find references to the natural world as a place to uncover lessons for living, sometimes explicitly as a place of testing. Nature is sometimes cast as the place of temptation or a place where we get lost. Nature is also presented in fairy tales as a dangerous place yet also a place where we must go to grow up. The mountain top, the desert, the woods and the wilderness each carry a metaphoric or mythic tone that the actual natural locations can truly convey.

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 lessons for living well. “These roses under my window,” Emerson 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. Were you multi-tasking? Or were you fully present and enjoying the moment, ‘perfect in every moment of your existence.’

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.

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 somehow 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.

There was a little study done in Scotland a few years back. It was reported in the New York Times with the title “Easing Brain Fatigue with a Walk in the Park.” (“Easing Brain Fatigue with a Walk in the Park” by Gretchen Reynolds; March 27, 2013, NYTimes.com) Primarily it was a test run for a portable EEG pack. Until these little devices, any study of brain activity had to take place within the confines of a lab where the Electroencephalogram machine could be used. Well, they invented a portable version that people can wear. The electrodes are hidden beneath an ordinary cap and the readings are sent wirelessly to a laptop carried in a small backpack. Thus configured, an individual can walk around town rather than sit in a lab.

So, one of the first experiments they did was to study the impact of different environments on a person’s brainwave activity. They had volunteers walk through three distinct neighborhoods in Edinburgh: first an historic shopping district with very little vehicle traffic but plenty of sidewalks, next a park-like setting, and finally a busy, high-traffic commercial district. It is no surprise I am sure that the findings showed people were more meditative in the park-like setting and more frustrated in the busy setting.

This is not a dramatic study. As I said, the primary goal seems to have been to test run the new portable EEGs. But still, I’ll point out that the busy, commercial and concrete setting was very demanding on the brain activity. Urban settings demand our attention, the commerce, the people, the traffic, we need to be paying attention. The more natural setting allowed the brain activity to settle into what psychology is calling ‘involuntary attention.’

This is using the word ‘involuntary’ in the automatic sense used biologically for breathing and the beating of our hearts. We don’t think each breath, it just happens naturally. Our brains also have a default setting. This study corroborated this understanding by showing that the volunteer’s brain wave activity went into the involuntary attention mode while in the park-like setting. In other words, they relaxed. The brain is still engaged, but the attention demanded is effortless. The natural world holds our attention but it also allows us the freedom for reflection and contemplation.

Another study, done a few decades back reaches much the same conclusion: we seek out nature because we find it good for our spirits. It was a study about how children use elementary school playgrounds. They replaced “an acre and a half of asphalt with a diverse group of traditional playground swings and bars; structures and sitting area; and a half-acre of fishing ponds, streams, woods, and meadows.” (from The Geography of Childhood by Gary Nabhan and Stephen Trimble, p 66) Then the researchers did the low-tech option, rather than hooking the people up to potable EEGs, they just watched the children to see where and how they played.

As you might guess, the kids spent more time with the ponds, streams, woods and meadows compared to the traditional playground equipment. But more than that, “the natural area of the playground saw wider ranges of activities and more mixing of the genders.” (Ibid) The researchers also talked to the kids about the spaces. This is how the children described the natural area: “It’s a very good place. Really quiet. Lots of kids just sit around there and talk.” “It’s just perfect.” (Ibid) Children make themselves at home in nature.

Ralph Waldo Emerson speculated that adults don’t really see nature anymore. “The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and heart of the child.” He claimed when we come back to the woods we come as children in wonder.

In his essay, “Nature” Emerson expands on this idea writing: “Standing on the bare ground – my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space – all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.”

Or to consider a different topography, my colleague, Marni Harmony, wrote in our meditation this morning, “I say it touches us that our blood is sea water and our tears are salt … I say we have to go down into the wave’s trough to find ourselves, and then ride her swell until we can see beyond ourselves into our neighbor’s eye.”

Our choir sang (“Children of the Earth” by Sharon Scholl) “We are children of the earth / nurtured in its hills and plains / fed by its sun warmed by its sun / our green home in the universe.”

John Muir wrote: “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.”

Wild places are necessary for if we do not seek out wild places in nature then we will not learn the gift they offer to the wild places in our hearts, and we will starve a sacred and necessary aspect of our lives for want of wilderness. It is my balance, my taproot of spiritual health. Wilderness is the touchstone of my spirit. Go seek out the wild places in your life and in our world for there is the perseveration of all we hold dear.

In a world without end,

may it be so.

Grounded in Beauty

September 18, 2022

Rev. Douglas Taylor

Sermon video: https://youtu.be/dDKc_FaeQ7s

My granddaughter turned 6 months old this week. She, like all children, is a delight to behold. She is close to crawling, she really likes solid food, and loves to be outside. Her fine motor skills are steadily improving and she is good at grasping things in her little hands. Occasionally she will just hold her hands up and look at them, (hold up hands) flexing her fingers and pivoting her wrists, just beholding her own hands with wonder.

I was telling my spouse about the reading we had for this morning from Cole Arthur Riley (from This Here Flesh) in which her father describes an experience he had in a dance class. He makes a particular leap and surprises himself when his body does it. And he says the line: It’s not arrogant to wow yourself every once in a while. It’s not arrogance, it’s just paying attention. (p36) And my granddaughter, as I was describing this scene to my spouse, at that exact moment lifts up one hand (hold up hand) to watch herself flex her fingers and pivot her wrist.

Our opening hymn, “O What a Piece of Work Are We” # 313, is not one we sing much. Nowadays if someone says, “Oh, he’s a real piece of work!” it is not mean as a compliment! That is some shade. But an earlier rendering of that phrase was intended to signal awe. “How marvelously wrought” the hymn says. It is not arrogance to wow yourself every once in a while. It’s just paying attention!

Our bodies are locations of wonder and beauty All the world’s wondrousness is not contained in the birds and waterfalls and the sunlight at dawn. We, too, are locations of awe and amazement if we will but pay attention. Do you? … pay attention? … love your body?

I know loving your own body is fraught in our culture. There is so much shame poured out onto us about our bodies – are they thin enough, curvy enough, soft enough, hard enough?  Are they the wrong color, the wrong size, the wrong shape? The shame we are encouraged to have about our bodies is boundless.

James Baldwin once wrote: “It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.” This can be caught up in racism, sexism, homophobia or fatphobia, or just plain-old run-of-the-mill ‘family of origins’ toxicity.

It can be an act of liberation to love yourself, to love your body. Do you notice now and then how wonderous and beautiful you are? It is a grounding virtue, a root value for living to be able to see your own beauty. Beauty is necessary. Baldwin talked about unlearning the negative so he could “walk on the earth as though [he] had a right to be here.” To belong.

With Baldwin, I say when we are able to belong within our own skin, then we are able to belong anywhere. Do you feel like you belong? Loving our own bodies, being wowed by ourselves now and then, opens us into so much more. It is a grounding virtue to be aware of your own beauty! Are you grounded in beauty?

Early in this pandemic, back when we still thought it might stretch on for months – before we knew it would stretch for years – a few wise souls started talking a lot about somatic practices, embodies spiritual practices. This became a theme in some of my collegial ministers’ retreats. More than once in 2020, I attended a program focused around somatic practices, around grounding and embodied resilience, around getting back into our own bodies.

What a gift it was to be invited into that practice. I am more familiar with spiritual practices that lead me away from my body. I do a regular silent meditation, a practice of emptying my thoughts. While learning to do this kind of silent meditation, thoughts would intrude and my own body would intrude – something would itch or I would feel an ache somewhere or I would feel the urge to fidget. The goal for this form of silent meditation, I learned, was to gently notice this desire to fidget or that itchy body part; notice and then release it.

But these somatic practices I was offered at the beginning of the pandemic were intended to have my focus on my body. When my attention was on this or that part of my body the point was not to gently notice and release. The point was to gently notice and embrace.

Here we all were, isolated and unable to be together in person. Each of us alone at our computer screens trying to connect across the long, lonely distance. And instead of lament or problem solving or minimizing – I was invited to celebrate my own body, to appreciate how my body was surviving and showing up in the hard times, to notice how marvelously wrought.

And here’s the thing: this activity was designed to help us with the isolation. It seems counterintuitive, but it worked. It was intended to help us connect with each other – to support and be supported by each other. Adrienne Maree Brown has said:

“Belonging doesn’t begin with other people accepting us. It begins with our acceptance of ourselves. Of the particular life and skin each of us was born into, and the work that that particular birth entails… From that deep place of belonging to ourselves, we can understand that we are inherently worthy of each other.”

If you are feeling isolated and disconnected, if the pandemic or any other circumstance is causing you to feel cut off – there is a healing way to begin just with yourself. Adrienne Maree Brown has been an important teacher for many Unitarian Universalists lately, leading workshops at General Assembly and for religious professionals. She’s not UU but I think she likes us. She helps me to see the connection between my own ‘deep place of belonging’ within myself where I can, as she puts it, “understand that we are inherently worthy of each other.” I can notice the beauty and wondrousness of my own body. It’s not arrogant to wow yourself every once in a while. It’s not arrogance, it’s just paying attention.

Now, I do know being self-focused has a negative edge. I understand how loving yourself and thinking yourself quite beautiful can show up as a personality flaw. But this spiritual practice of loving your own body, of being wowed by yourself now and then, it is not an exercise in vanity.

In the reading we had this morning, Riley warned against imagining beauty as something out there – only found in art or nature, or only affirmed through the eyes of another – she wrote: “In this state you are not approaching what you are seeking. You are running from your own face.” Vanity is about seeking external proof of our beauty in other’s eyes. What we are talking about now is acknowledging the internal evidence of that wondrous beauty ourselves.

To be truly self-aware of my own beauty does not lead me into vanity. Instead, it leads me deeper into connection with the beauty of others. Riley talked about it as “the capacity to be in awe of humanity, even your own.” Earlier I said this beauty can be a grounding virtue, a root value. Loving our own bodies, being wowed by ourselves now and then, opens us into so much more. I want to talk about the ‘more.’ I want to talk about what grows out of this root of self-beauty.

When we know that we belong to ourselves, when we love our bodies as they are, it opens us to a stance of acceptance for ourselves that will almost automatically be extended to others. The same ‘paying attention’ that allows us to wow ourselves every once in a while, will also allow us to be wowed by others as well.

We are meant to be connected. We are meant to have roots that go down and also runners that travel out! We are meant to be in this together so we all might thrive. This line of reasoning takes us into conversations about the welfare of all those in need, into convictions of liberation and justice, into connections of respect and love without jealousy for the success and joy of others. These conversations and convictions and connections are the ‘more’ I am talking about that can arise from our simple self-awareness of our own beauty and wonder. (Hold up hand)   

I invite you to notice your own hand, really look at it. It is a little easier for babies, I know. My granddaughter is a mere half-a-year old and perhaps easily impressed. It is harder for us adults to release all the layers of negativity we’ve been fed through the years. But notice your hand!  

You are a marvel to behold. It’s not arrogant to wow yourself every once in a while. It’s not arrogance, it’s just paying attention. Our bodies are locations of wonder and beauty All the world’s wondrousness is not contained in the birds and waterfalls and the sunlight at dawn. Look at your hand! We, too, are locations of awe and amazement if we will but pay attention.

And what about all the other hands around us? We are meant to be connected. We are meant to see each other as beautiful. We each carry the image of the divine. What might that mean communally? Cole Arthur Riley raises this point in her book:

“Some theologians say it is not an individual but a collective people who bear the image of God. I quite like this, because it means we need a diversity of people to reflect God more fully. Anything less and the image becomes pixelated and grainy, still beautiful but lacking in clarity.” (p7)

So my message today is not only a message of embracing your own beauty, your own body. It is also a message of liberation and wonder. All of humanity is caught up in this image of God. You, yes – certainly you! But also everyone else, in fact, only with everyone else.

When you feel isolated or disconnected you can reliably turn to your own body for wisdom and wonder. You are a location of the beauty and awe. And from there, do you notice all the other amazing people as well.

When we are grounded in beauty, we will belong in this world.

When we are grounded in beauty, we will see the amazing beauty of others.

When we are grounded in our own beautiful bodies, we will respect and honor the bodies of others – particularly the vulnerable among us.

When we are grounded in beauty we are connected like roots and runners to everything else; and we will bring more justice and care to the world.

When we are grounded in beauty we will belong.

When we belong, we will welcome others to also belong and from there, every good thing can grow.

It is not arrogance to believe this is true. It is just paying attention.

In a world without end,

May it be so.

Agreements and Tensions

Rev. Douglas Taylor

8-25-22

Reading:

From: Stitching a Layered Faith – UU World Magazine, Spring 2022 https://www.uuworld.org/articles/layered-faith

Multiple Voices, One Faith. Nuanced, surprising, and beautiful, Unitarian Universalism joins together myriad sources and experiences. It’s right there in our name: Unitarian Universalism. But the layers go deeper than the consolidation of two American religious traditions. … Christians, Humanists, Atheists. Jews, Pagans, Buddhists, and Muslims. Spiritual refugees and lifelong UUs with multigeneration family histories. University scholars, ordained ministers, chaplains, and lay leaders. Religious educators, administrators, and music ministers.

Unitarian Universalism is not, as some may quip, a place where we can believe anything we want. It is a place to approach our growth as spiritual people with openness and curiosity, a place where multiple beliefs, multiple traditions, and multiple life experiences will enrich and inform our search. In community, we piece together a faith that seeks to make sense of the world and empowers us to create change. …

---

Sermon:

Our reading this morning is from our UU World magazine, the spring edition of this year: “Stitching a Layered Faith.” Following the opening paragraph we just heard, there are four short pieces written by four voices in our faith. The article reveals a portion of the many, many voices in our one faith. I’ve asked our worship associate to read the four sections from the four different authors for us as we work our way through the sermon this morning.

Many voices, one faith. This is important because this point about “many voices, one faith” is a central aspect of who we are, or maybe I should say of how we are together. We do not all believe the same thing. In our story this morning, https://www.uua.org/worship/words/time-all-ages/its-not-what-you-believe-how we talked about how “most religions define themselves by what they believe.” But Unitarian Universalism is different in that we define ourselves by how we believe, by how we carry our beliefs together. We have long kept a ‘freedom of conscience’ concept in our central definitions of ourselves. We do not insist we all believe the same; we instead allow each to believe as they must, as their individual conscience demands. We trust that faith cannot be coerced. I’ve long felt this to be one of our greatest features as a faith.

A Unitarian Universalists, we are “Christians, Humanists, Atheists. Jews, Pagans, Buddhists, and Muslims.” We are skeptics, seekers, and searchers; we are people who blend and balance a bounty of beliefs. And the best part of all that is how we have joined together – beyond belief – to be together in community. Our centering bond is not around shared beliefs; it is, instead, a covenant. We are not one in believing, but one in the values we share.

Now, usually I would pivot at this point to talk at length about the covenant that binds us as one. Usually this would turn into an elegant sermon about our agreements. But today I would have us dig into the differences. Today, let us consider not what holds us together, but the differences that create tension in our togetherness. Today, let us explore some of our glorious tensions.

Reading:

Janice Marie Johnson

As a Jamaican child of the Caribbean, … My grandparents and parents were nation builders who taught me to notice and question “all that is our lives.”

Jamaica is home to churches, temples, synagogues, and many other communities of worship. As a child, my family encouraged me to ask questions about religion. I asked questions about everything around me: about God, Rastafarianism, the virgin birth, Catholicism, Jesus, sin, Judaism, and much more. Unlike my Sunday school teachers, my parents offered expansive answers and more questions for collective contemplation.

At home, I grew up with the undeniable success of reggae, which crossed borders of class, matters of conscience, and religion. Rastafarianism, the dominant religion of early reggae musicians, was often shunned by the Jamaican elite, but things were changing. My family developed dear friendships with reggae and Rastafarian musical families, including the Marleys. To this day, I consider my Rastafarian “bredda,” Peter Tosh, to be a modern-day prophet. In his song, “Equal Rights,” he urges us to strive to attain equal rights with justice, to honor our ancestors and ourselves. His prayer is my prayer for our faith, for our fragile world, for all the generations.

I was blessed to grow up knowing that “Children should be seen and heard.” It is reminiscent of the UU message, “The answer is to question.” Our voices matter. They are sacred. For this, I give thanks.

---

Sermon:

You may recognize the name Janice Marie Johnson. She is a Commissioned Lay Minister, or CLM, serving a UU congregation in New York City. She is part of a cohort of CLMs that includes our own Commissioned Lay Minister Jeff Donahue. Janice and Jeff are colleagues and friends. We have used material from Janice Marie Johnson in our worship services several times in recent years.

In her piece just now, Johnson talks about blending Rastafarianism with Unitarian Universalism. Do you know the central beliefs of Rastafarianism? One aspect of that faith most of us would agree with is the emphasis on freedom and liberation of the community. The particulars of that, I imagine, most of us would disagree with of at least question. The particulars say historic slavery and current economic and racial oppression are simply the Jamaican people being tested by God; and that soon, God will deliver them from captivity back to their rightful place in Zion which is really Africa.

I don’t know if Johnson, in harkening to her Jamaican and Rastafarian roots, is proclaiming her belief in every part of that. Johnson talks about certain values and practices she still holds from her childhood. But she doesn’t say if there are particular beliefs. So let us step back from this exact example and notice a common tension that lives among us.

Many Unitarian Universalists grew up in a different faith tradition. It is common to have an appreciation of some of the aspects of your childhood faith while no longer subscribing to all the beliefs of that faith. And that can create a bit of tension for folks. Our practices and actions, how we behave in the world, are rooted in values and beliefs. There is a tension when we don’t really hold those beliefs anymore yet still hold strong to the practice and actions that were inspired by those old beliefs.

As Unitarian Universalists, we allow for the blending of our experiences to inform our living and our values. This is how we have people who say they are Unitarian Universalist as well as a second religious description. Our next section of the reading, for example, is from James Ishmael Ford who is American Zen Buddhist priest and a Unitarian Universalist minister.

Reading:

James Ishmael Ford

The single most powerful source for my spiritual life has been silence. Discovering the place between words and ideas, tasting it, smelling it, listening to it, has opened me to the rhythms of life and death and to the heart of love.

I have a formal practice that invites the silence. Over the years, finding regular times to just sit with it has been critical. Taking a few days or even a week to sit with others in a practice centered on silence has been life-giving. …

Silence tells me where I come from. It points to where I will go. And it runs a wild current through my life today. Silence … shows me how I am connected to the rest of my human family and to the larger family of things.

I notice it as I inhale. I notice it as I exhale. I notice it on the turns, in and out.

My words, feeble things in general, attempt to recall what I’ve learned within those silent spaces where the universes are revealed. Sometimes I succeed.

These words birthed in silence, I’ve found, point to the great healing.

---

Sermon:

Rev. Ford’s blended beliefs lead him to certain practices such as silent meditation. That is a practice in line with both Buddhism and Unitarian Universalism. Mindfulness meditation, modeled after various Buddhist practices, is quite common in Unitarian Universalist congregations.

The tension I would lift up after hearing Ford’s piece is the tension between the individual and community. Some contend that the goal of a congregation is to support the spiritual growth of the individual. Others insist that our goal is to build a beloved community. Rather than trying to resolve the tension, it is worthy to let our congregations live in the tension.

Imagine a conversation, for example, between Ford and Johnson about the complimentary values of silence and speaking out, of inner work and outward engagement. Ford wrote: “Silence tells me where I come from. It points to where I will go.” And like a counter point, Johnson has written, “Our voices matter.” Both authors talk about the connection they feel with their community and how that connection draws them to serve the needs of the world. But they arrive to that conclusion from different paths – silence and speaking out, reaching in and reaching out. I often tackle this tension in my sermons, calling on us to do our inner work, to be gentle with ourselves; and in other sermons I lean more heavily on our call to build a better world together. But the answer is not one or the other. The tension allows amazing things to arise.

The next voice we will hear from the reading is Rev. Abhi Janamanchi. I know Rev. Janamanchi from our time together in seminary. I have reached out to him a number of times for counsel and advice. He is a good colleague.

Reading:

Abhi Janamanchi

I grew up in a Hindu household. Some of my earliest experiences of devotion came from watching my grandmother every morning … chanting Sanskrit mantras in front of the family shrine. She embodied the Hindu idea that the spiritual journey is something deeply personal, between oneself and the Holy, and that I need to find and follow my own path.

So, I became a Unitarian Universalist-Hindu.

My UU-Hindu faith declares that underlying and animating the human self is a reservoir of being that is infinite, all-pervading, and ultimate truth-consciousness-joy (sat-chit-ananda) known as brahman. The infinite brahman is present in all beings.…

My UU-Hindu faith focuses on life before death. It is about being awakened from our inertia to life, again and again. It proposes a way of being engaged in this world that is characterized by liberation from the many manifestations of greed and by a deep affirmation of abundance and generosity.

My UU-Hindu faith promotes the inherent worth, dignity, and divinity of all beings. It rejects any social, cultural, or political systems founded on inequity and injustice.

My UU-Hindu faith teaches personal responsibility and accountability. It reminds me that the consequences of our actions extend beyond our individual lives.

To be a UU-Hindu is to do the daily work of investing my time, my gifts, and my life in service of a Life larger than my own.

---

Sermon:

It is here I would lift up the most obvious and most recognized tension in our faith: the tension around God. This tension has a long history among us.

Over the years when I have checked, I have reliably found that more than half of this Binghamton congregation does not believe in God. Others here believe in something greater but do not call it God. Janamanchi speaks of the infinite brahman, for example, as well as Life with a capital “L.” But he does not, at least in this article piece, speak of God by that name. So it is with some of us here in this congregation. Others among us will speak of God and use the word God, but often find it necessary to clarify what they mean by the word God rather than to let an incorrect assumption of what is meant to occur. And some among us practice a faith that calls on many names for many Gods and Goddesses.

And yet we are all still here in the room together; many voices, one faith. We disagree about this question about the existence of God. A point that is usually a central belief in Christian congregations. For us, it is not a problem; it is a rich tension.

I was recently reminded that a few decades back, the word “God” was considered controversial in our sanctuary. Part of what changed from then to now is a healthy recognition of how valuable it is to allow the tension of our different beliefs to inform who we are as a community.

I am a theist. I use the word God to talk about that power and grace that pervades our living. But I don’t need everyone to agree with me. Differences in our beliefs can be approached with curiosity rather than confrontation. Tell me more about your values and what inspires you to be a good person. God is often part of such a conversation for people who believe in God. But lean in and listen – not only for your own voice but for the voices of others. We have much to learn from each other. It is an enriching tension and it leads us deeper.

Reading:

Amanda Poppei

When it comes down to it, my faith comes from the amazing, against-all-odds, courageous, beautiful resilience of the human heart: the way that people find joy after grief, courage after fear, liberation after oppression. I never fail to be awestruck by those stories. But every faith needs a wellspring, a source, that can be continually renewed—and that’s why I read romance novels. No, really. This minister is telling you to read romance novels—well, if they help you remember that love is always possible. Or to watch children’s fairytale movies, which so often have at their heart a message of redemption after mistakes. Or to collect the stories around you, the heroes of resistance in a broken world, who keep on fighting or loving or simply surviving even when the system seems (is) stacked against them.

So often we imagine that our moments of spiritual insight have to come from the “right” kinds of places, from beautiful poetry or the woods. And listen, I love poetry! And the woods! But what I want to say today is that the spiritual is all around us, that our faith can be replenished in the silly, the sexy, the sacred: that these may just be one and the same. I once knew someone who found themselves in a deep valley of sadness, struggling to understand how to continue forward. They found their way out through episodes of Care Bears. So be exuberant with your faith-sourcing! Allow wisdom in from every source! Perhaps, like me, you’ll find a reminder of the heart’s resilience in the least likely of places.

Sermon:

Rev. Poppei is an atheist. You’ll notice perhaps there is no reference to a deity in her piece. She served for a decade at the Washington Ethical Society in D.C., an intentionally non-theistic community. But in her piece, she leads us to consider different sources of inspiration. Indeed, all of the voices from this article lead us to consider our difference sources of inspiration.

As a congregation we talk about resilience and grace, love, peace, and faith. We draw from many sources leading us to actions and practices in the world. Those sources of inspiration are many and sometimes surprising. This summer we had worship services about walking the labyrinth and baking cookies as practices that can lead us to greater wholeness and connection. We heard about poetry and caring for the earth. Lay members of this congregation stepped into this space to share with us what nourishes and inspires them.

 
And no one was required to agree with everything that was shared. Maybe poetry or baking is not your thing. It doesn’t have to be. But maybe there is still a requirement revealed here. Maybe we do make a commitment – not to all believe one thing or another – but to listen to and encourage one another along the way as we grow in spirit and understanding. Maybe the value of experiencing the tensions is a way for each of us to learn to remain true to our own beliefs. To listen to and encourage the search for ourselves and others. The tensions are worth it. They help keep us true.

May we continue to abide together in the rich tensions of our different beliefs.

May this ‘abiding’ be revealed anew as one of our most potent agreements together.

May this time we share lead you into deeper understanding

and may it strengthen the connections you have to your own faith

and to the people around you in this community.

And may we go well into the coming days and weeks ahead.

In a world without end,

May it be so.