Sermons

Thus Do We Covenant

Rev. Douglas Taylor

1-28-24

Sermon Video: https://youtu.be/PLuBXFEUFf4

I bought a new laptop computer this week. My old, trusty machine died over last weekend and I spent several days trying to coax it back to life to no avail. Thus, it was I sat in front of my new laptop Friday morning, clicking, and accepting the “terms of agreement” for multiple pieces of software. I trust most of you are familiar with the experience. I am asked to read and comprehend page after page of legalese intended to cover each corporation from legal action, and then click the little box saying, “I have read this document and understand what it says.” After accepting with my click, I am then allowed to download and use the product.

I will confess, I did not read all the documents all the way through every time. I’ve read through enough of them to know the gist of what they say. And after the fourth or fifth product installment I had the sudden, hesitant thought: “Wait, what exactly am I agreeing to?” On the surface, I know the answers – I’ve signed up for Zoom and Adobe pdf editor and so on; software I’ve been using without concern for the past several years. Still, I had a moment, just after clicking on of those buttons, “What did I just agree to?”

Of course, it got me thinking about all the other places in my life where we have these agreements and how we may or may not pay attention to the small print of the situation. But you know, it’s only the business transactions that have the fine print actually all spelled out.

When you join this congregation, for example, we have you sign the membership book. And we don’t give you an extra page of legal provisos and addendums about what it means. We don’t have fine print spelling out the implications. What we have is a covenant.

You have heard me say before that Unitarian Universalism is a little different from most other religious communities. And our reliance on covenants is part of it. Often what I say is that we are centered around values rather than beliefs. We don’t have a creed or statement of belief that everyone must agree to before they click and accept our ‘terms of agreement’ as they join. We, instead, have values.

This is a helpful distinction when we are talking with other people about Unitarian Universalism. When we are asked what we believe here, we can respond saying – that’s the wrong question. Instead of all believing the same, we have shared values at our center.

Here is the trick, however. We have not simply swapped a list of beliefs for a list of values that we all have to accept. The new Article II statement which is set to replace our seven principles as an official definition of Unitarian Universalism lists the following core values: equality, interdependence, transformation, pluralism, generosity, justice, and liberating love. It is more explicitly a list of values compared to what we have as our current principles. However – and this is very important – it still is not a list of what we each must accept and agree to before joining a UU congregation!

It is easier to explain Unitarian Universalism to someone using the idea of values instead of beliefs. And it’s not wrong to frame it that way. But to really get at the heart of what is going on in our congregations, to really understand the ‘terms of agreement’ you click and accept when joining, to really know ‘what you just agreed to’ when you signed the membership book – we need to talk about covenant.

Covenant is about how we agree to be with each other in our community. Here is a working definition I found that I like: “Covenant is a mutual sacred promise between individuals or groups, to stay in relationship, care about each other, and work together in good faith.” (Unlocking the Power of Covenant Report of the UUA Commission on Appraisal, June 2021; p xiii)

All groups must navigate the interplay of the individual in community. Some groups over emphasize the individual while other lean stronger toward community. Historically, our Unitarian Universalist communities have had a strong preference for the individual. Freedom of the individual conscience, respect for the inherent worth and dignity of each person, making space for each voice – this is all an effort to lift the individual.  But we also are a community. And while we are each on our own path, we are traveling together – supporting each other in our journeys. Covenant is the concept we use to hold ourselves together.

We are seekers first; always open to new learning, to new insight, to new understanding. And the best avenue we have found is to be seekers in community. The covenant of respect and mutual care is the framework that provides the freedom we long for and the best boundaries possible for being in community together.

Yes, we have shared values. But we don’t need to necessarily agree on the exact language of that list of values, or the order in which they appear on the list. Yes, the values are important. But more than that – what matters to us is how we are in this conversation about our shared values. I find that calling us ‘covenanted seekers’ is a more accurate way to define us than to say we are a community bound by shared values. Because the covenant is what holds us together, it is what keeps us working together on the list of values we share. It is what keeps us as individuals in community. We are covenanted seekers.

But covenant is an odd word in our current language. Most folks will glaze over a bit when you drop that word into conversation. It is a statement of relationship. Covenant is an old idea.

The song we sang “Where you go I will go” is a covenantal reference to the book of Ruth. Covenant has a significant starting point in Hebrew Scripture, we can talk about Noah and Abraham, Moses and David. In each of those cases, however, the specifics of the concept, the details of how it worked are not all that applicable to how covenant works for us today. But it remains a good starting point and a solid reference for comparison.

In Hebrew Scripture, God is like a king setting the terms of the agreement. The people can accept them or not – but there is not room for negotiations and alterations. There was no amendment process for the ten commandments. But that’s how it was when people lived under the rule of a king. The king set the terms of agreement. And that’s how they imaged it could be under God as well.

In these Biblical stories, God was a character in the events with whom the Israelites would enter into covenant. God would make a promise: to not destroy the inhabitants of the earth by flood again, using Noah’s example, or to bring forth a great nation in Abraham’s example. God made certain promises to the people if the people would agree to abide by God’s law. “I will be your God and you will be my people.” The relational part of the covenant is clear in these old Biblical examples. But it is more one-sided than we experience in our congregations today.

Fast forward many centuries and we can find a form of covenantal theology that also follows a model of government: democracy instead of monarchy. When you shift the government model that the theology is using as a metaphor, the implications for the theological model are quite dramatic. Instead of the holy being vested in a single authority, holiness is found within every person.  

Modern Congregationalism traces its roots to Robert Browne and the English separatists of the late 1500’s. Browne gave up on the Church of England and attempted to create a new model of ecclesiology, or rather in his mind to recreate a very old model based on the early Christian house-church gatherings.

But here is the interesting stuff that carries forward for us from this history: We Unitarian Universalists have taken Congregational Polity to heart and have established our congregations in keeping with the basic tenets of Congregationalism from 400 years back. It radically relocated religious authority from the hierarchy of bishops and priests to the people in the pews.

And that is where our ideas of covenant really flourish. There is, as I’ve outlined, a deep history to our ideas of covenant. But there is also a remarkably contemporary understanding of covenant at play among us. The concept is old but we use it with our own modern spin. And part of why I think it is helpful to remember the older part is that it reminds us that covenants do not talk strictly about the relationship between individuals – between just you and me and you and you. Covenant in the way we talk about the individual’s relationship with the community, with us.

It is like a marriage. Think about weddings for a moment – the wedding vows in particular. Wedding vows are a form of covenant. They are often framed as a promise one individual is making to another individual. But really those vows are not to the individuals but the union itself, to the “us” that is created by the wedding.

And so it is with a congregational covenant. When you join this congregation, and you promise “to dwell together in peace, to seek the truth in love, and to help one another,” that is not a promise you are extending to each individual member. Instead, it is a promise to the “us” that is the congregation.

The covenant, therefore, calls you to consider and treat each individual member of the congregation as you would any other member of the congregation. There are certain basic pieces that you automatically offer to every member – not because you like them or even know them – simply because we are all covered under the same covenantal relationship.

It is a theological system that creates a relational equality. You treat people well not because you like them but because you have chosen to be in covenant with this congregation and what it stands for. A covenant allows us to sustain a community by promising to one another our mutual trust and support.

Part of that is about being kind with one another – as our behavioral covenant asks of us. Part of that is what allows our plurality – I’m seeking on my path of understanding and you are seeking on yours. We don’t need to be on the same paths to support each other – we don’t need to think alike to love alike.

So some of you in the room signed the membership book years or even decades ago. Some of you are newer members and some of you here haven’t joined yet and never will. And then there are some of you who have not yet clicked on and accepted the terms of agreement but you are thinking about it.

For you, let me say – there is no official document of our terms or agreement. Sorry. But here is a close version of what such a document might say: You will be asked to make a financial commitment and you will be asked every year to reconsider that financial commitment. You will be invited to offer your gifts and talents, and you’ll be invited to help shape this community as we live our promises together. And you will be held and supported, challenged and persuaded, accepted and inspired and – if you’re lucky – occasionally transformed.

In short, you will be part of this community and this community will be yours. “And your people are my people.” And together we will do what we can to manifest the Beloved Community together again and again, week after week.

In a world without end,

May it be so.

Martin’s Letter as Biblical Epistle

1-15-24

Rev. Douglas Taylor

Sermon video: https://youtu.be/KfYC3xdzpZ8

There was more than one conversation in my UU ministers circles asking which text will people be using this Sunday from Dr. King. Several people shared they were referencing the “Beyond Vietnam” speech, others of course focused on the famous “I Have a Dream” speech. At least one colleague is using the text of his Ware Lecture to the Unitarian Universalists in 1966. Another said she was following from his book Where Do We Go from Here: Community of Chaos? Dr. King certainly left us a considerable amount of material to work with.

I’m not sure when it became a common tradition among us to honor Dr. King’s message each January. An obvious possibility is in connection with 1983 when MLK Day became a national holiday. It does not seem as if there was a concerted effort from somewhere in the UUA to make this happen, it seems more organic. I’ve certainly felt a need to speak about racism, democracy, and justice each year in connection with the holiday – similar to how I feel I need to preach about forgiveness around the time of Yom Kippur each year. It just feels needed and now is a good time to bring it up. It is part of my regular liturgical year. King’s words are for me like liturgical scripture – text that keeps reappearing on my Sunday calendar year after year. 

Of course, there is a danger with this line of thinking. It does happen that people will only talk about the happy parts of Dr. King’s message and only this one time each year. ‘Whitewashing’ is the unironic term for such behavior. The question can arise – why only King? Why have this heavy focus on his words as if no one else every spoke eloquently or powerfully?

Remember Ella Baker who said “Until the killing of black men, black mothers’ sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother’s son, we who believe in freedom cannot rest.” And Jackie Robinson said, “I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me. All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.” And we do well to remember that “In a racist society it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist,’ was first spoken by Angela Davis. And it was Malcom X who said “You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.” Any of those voices would be a solid focusing center for a sermon on racism, democracy, and justice. And for a more contemporary voice, listen to Alicia Garza, founder of the Black Live Matter movement, who said: “The fight is not just being able to keep breathing. The fight is actually to be able to walk down the street with your head held high — and feel like I belong here, or I deserve to be here, or I just have [a] right to have a level of dignity.”

So why all the focus on Dr. King? I’ll start by agreeing that our ears should not only be open to the words of Dr. King on the topics of racism, democracy, and justice! I’ve made a note to myself to do a sermon focused on James Baldwin next year – probably not in January. And I don’t think I have done a sermon on the relationship between Dr. King and Malcom X – I’ll put that on my list as well.

But I am going to keep bringing Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s message to this congregation for two reasons. First, King has achieved a mythic level of acceptance in our society and it would be a waste to ignore him when speaking about the very issues that were central to his life’s work. King’s message already has a foothold in our broader culture. His legacy is sufficiently entangled with our nation’s story such that the message is already in the room! The second reason I continue to focus on King is because his message is still relevant to our situation today. I need to hear his message still. He was nuanced and deep enough in what he said more than half a century ago that we are still working toward his vision today.

Perhaps a third reason is something I’ve been pondering lately and is expressed in the title I chose for this morning’s sermon: “Martin’s Letter as Biblical Epistle.” I don’t mean to suggest we turn King into a saint and treat all his writings and speeches as the holy and infallible word of God. I don’t treat the actual bible that way – so of course that’s not what I’m suggesting with my title.

Let me pause for a moment and unpack the word ‘epistle.’ Like many ‘bible-y’ sounding words, it comes to us from Greek through Latin. It essentially means ‘a long, formal letter.’ Many people will simply refer to them as the letters, or more commonly, by the recipient community. 1^st Corinthians, for example, is the first of two letter Paul wrote to the church community in the city of Corinth.

Apostle Paul wrote many of the epistles we have in the bible, or at least the first handful; several others were written in his style. And when we say ‘long, formal letter’ I will share that King’s letter from Birmingham Jail is a little shorter than Paul’s longest letter in the bible, Romans.

Biblical scholars agree that the letters from Paul are the earliest Christian writings – the Gospels with their accounts of Jesus’ ministry were written decades later. Paul wrote his letters to these young congregations, addressing concerns of doctrine and behavior, encouraging them to live and act in more Christ-like ways. In recent years, people have occasionally offered letters written in the spirit of Paul, following Paul’s format or using some of Paul’s language or echoing the kind of message Paul offered. In that sense, King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail can be seen as such a letter written to the White Christian Churches of America.

Indeed, in the Letter from Birmingham Jail, King even suggests this interpretation of his letter when, explaining why he traveled from Atlanta to Birmingham for the demonstrations. He wrote:

I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the eighth-century prophets left their little villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their hometowns; and just as the Apostle Paul left his little village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to practically every hamlet and city in the Greco-Roman world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular hometown. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

So, consider Dr. King – like apostle Paul – crafting a letter to a community in need of guidance, in need of clarity and dare I say correction.

The general thrust of the letter is an articulation of how we have a moral responsibility to use non-violent direct actions to oppose unjust laws rather that to wait for justice to be delivered through the courts. In this way it is an updated, in the trenches, revisiting of Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience.”

“Unjust laws exist: [Thoreau writes] shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men, generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse.”

– Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

And a little over a hundred years later, King felt compelled to articulate the same sentiment when white clergy in Birmingham questioned his actions, suggestion he could wait. King responded saying “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” Do not blame the oppressed for the way they cry out in their oppression. Instead, join them. Thoreau, again, has said, “Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.”

Dr. King kept a dog-eared copy of that short essay on hand for moral sustenance and encouragement.  In his 1963 book, Strength to Love, Dr. King wrote, “The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific, and religious freedom have always been nonconformists.  In any cause that concerns the progress of [humankind], put your faith in the nonconformist!” 

I hasten to clarify at this point that the hard work of a civil disobedience campaign is that its not just a moment for non-conformists to act out. A civil disobedience campaign is organized and thoughtfully enacted. It is not a simple step to take, and certainly not one taken in isolation.

The main argument in Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is similar to that of Thoreau: Unjust laws call for a moral opposition and we cannot wait for the oppressor to set the timetable for an oppressed people’s freedom. I am sure the work looks differently today – witness how different the Black Lives Matter movement has been when compared to the Civil Rights movement of the 50’s and 60’s. And I hear how that sounds – to be describing what happened in the 60’s Civil Rights work and the current Black Lives Matter movement as if they are not the same ongoing effort.

“Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability.” Birmingham, chapter 4, verse 24, (I may be so playfully bold.) Progress is not inevitable. When King said the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice – he never meant for us to interpret that to say we can sit back and wait for universe to do the bending all on its own. Progress is not inevitable. “It comes,” King wrote, “through the tireless efforts and persistent work of [people] willing to be coworkers with God.”

Yes, we have done away with the lunch counter and drinking fountain version of segregation. Yes, we have had black astronauts and black senators and black billionaires and a black president. Yes there has been progress. But the rise of white nationalism and the flair up of white supremacy culture has been vitriolic and violent recently.

The reason we keep quoting King in our congregations is because we’re not done. King’s call for justice still serves our current situation. And it may take the form of fighting militarism or poverty – King certainly linked those evils in with racism as we experience it in our country. King would certainly applaud resistance against war and efforts to alleviate economic inequality as complimentary to our anti-racism work. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. Let our lives be the counter-friction to stop the machine.

As we prepare to go forth into the world from this morning, let us keep King’s call in our hearts. Let his eloquence ring in our ears. We can yet work against racism. We still can take part in speaking out against endless war. There is still more to do, right here in Binghamton in the struggle against poverty and economic inequality.

Let us go forth, ready to bend the moral arc of the universe a bit more toward justice today. Let us go forth, ready to help realize the dream King spoke about by working to feed the hungry, house the homeless, and care for the sick. Let us speak out against racism and the ways it corrodes the soul of our nation. Let us share the dream together, today. And let us have our hearts spurred into action to once again do the work of building the Beloved Community for today.

In a world without end

May it be so.

A Life of Ritual and Reason

Rev. Douglas Taylor

12-17-23

Sermon video: https://youtu.be/XuSzm2soTxU

Many Unitarian Universalists are not exactly “religious” in the way so many religious people use the term. We tend toward a rational and scientific outlook. At one point, a few generations back our rational and iconoclastic tendencies grew a bit extreme. As we went smashing through old dogma and repressive traditions, we challenged anything that had the whiff of ritual or ceremony. We would not be saddled with empty symbolism and meaningless sacrament. We would not be told what to do or what to believe, thank you very much. More recent generations have a more tempered perspective about ritual and other embodied spiritual practices.

Over the past few decades, we’ve been lighting chalices in worship, doing check-ins at meetings, and lighting candles during our time of Joys and Sorrows. I remember attending an installation service for an elder colleague almost 25 years ago. He had begun his ministry back in the 70’s. The good reverend was being installed as the new minister in a nearby church. The service was underway and it was suddenly clear that the person who was going to light the chalice was not in the room – likely stuck in traffic instead. The lead minister looked around the room, shrugged and said, “let’s skip that part.” And they did.

I remember at the time feeling unsettled by the dismissal of the chalice lighting. I like rituals and appreciate their value. I was unsettled by the dismissal of the chalice lighting not because I thought it was sacrilege or irreverent, but because if we are going to have a symbol present and a ritual planned around that symbol, then we should follow through with it. And if it is unimportant and meaningless, something we can just skip over, then why bother including it in the first place?

Here’s what I think shifted in Unitarian Universalism: it wasn’t so much that in the past we didn’t want rituals and religious ceremonies, and now we do. It was a refusal of empty rituals and meaningless ceremonies. We didn’t want to be going through the motions just because that’s the way it had always been done. The rituals ought to mean something. And they ought to mean something of value to us. Today, the act of lighting the chalice is seen as a meaningful and important part of our weekly gathering.

Many Unitarian Universalists have found our faith after having left a previous religious tradition. The departure is typically around a disconnect with values and belief. When we talk about rituals and ceremony as UUs now, it is important to notice that for many people, those traditional rituals and ceremonies, while comforting, were done in the service of those values and beliefs that no longer fit. And by association, those rituals and ceremonies no longer fit or offer comfort.

In the reading this morning, from Jennifer Michael Hecht’s new book The Wonder Paradox, we heard the author frame our question for non-religious people, for folks who refused the supernatural, asking – what about those useful comforting aspects of religion? Must we refuse those as well? Can non-religious people have some meaningful rituals in our lives and still have our integrity of belief or non-belief?

We Unitarian Universalists ask a similar question with a nuance. We have among us atheists and seekers who hold a non-supernatural outlook, but that is not all we have. We have pagans and people who practice an earth-centered spirituality who see the supernatural saturating our natural world – or if ‘supernatural’ is not an accurate term, at least something more than what science calls natural … saturating our natural world. And some of the theists among us will frame their belief as fully natural and others do not. So, we ask questions similar to Hecht in her book, but with certain nuances of pluralism.

Hecht’s book carries a delightful subtitle: The Wonder Paradox: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives. Life is weird, poetry helps. Her answers are in poetry. Many Unitarian Universalists have long agreed with this sort of answer. Poetry can carry quite profound layers of meaning in some cases, and it can bring quite poignant comfort in some cases as well. Poetry can challenge us or get us thinking or soothe our spirits or help us feel a deep connection.

And, delightfully, Hecht urges us to use poetry in a ritualistic manner. She calls us to develop a ritual pattern for using the poetry, to use poetry in the way religion uses prayers, scripture, and liturgical readings. She suggests that poetry is a form of meaning making and path for comfort amidst the vagaries and weirdness of life.

Did a friend invite you to their wedding? Have you read (p176) Guam Daosheng’s poem, “You and I Song”? Did someone in your life just have a baby? There is a great poem (p192) by Rumi that says “You were born with wings.” Did you just bump into Earth Day on the calendar? Try reading (p155-7) Joy Harjo’s “When the world as we knew it ended.” Are you worried about the fraying of the social contract in our society? Check out (p269-70) Maya Angelou’s excellent poem, “Still I Rise.” Did you just have a brush with mortality and begin pondering the meaning of it all? Go read (p 316) “A Mother in a Refugee Camp” by Chinua Achebe again. Hecht’s book is really a guidebook for crafting your own anthology and practice, a liturgy both intimate and authentic because you have made it yourself.

Last week I spoke of the importance of community. Many people – of whatever theological stripes – recognize the power and importance of religious community. Today, we talk about ritual. And I take my lead from Hecht this morning. I want to open us up to the conversation of ritual in a manner that is fitting, that serves.

Think about our time of Joys and Sorrows. The obvious ritual pieces are the lighting of candles and the reciting of the phrase “You are in our hearts” as a response to each sharing. If you are newer to our congregation, I would like you to know that this ritual has been crafted over several years in conversation. There were times when the Joys and Sorrows time was problematic. People shared on topics that were inappropriate. People would go on and on too long with their sharing. It felt like the time needed a slightly better definition to help it be the rich and potent ritual we knew it could be.

We started tinkering with it. We adjusted the opening instructions several times, trying to find the balance between light-hearted and stern, descriptive and prescriptive. We tried not lighting candles but dropping stones into water instead. We tried having everyone write their Joys and Sorrows in a book that I would read from instead of letting everyone come up individually. We tried adding a responsive phrase after each person spoke, and we went through a handful of different phrases – Hecht would recognize our use of poetry to help experience the ritual.

We arrived at our current model a few years ago. And when the pandemic hit, the whole show was turned upside down again. During the shut down we had no candles, no individual sharing, and no responsive phrase. And one person read out all the offerings at the end of the service following the postlude – which was a pragmatic solution allowing everyone plenty of time to write their Joy or Sorrow into the chat. We still had the sharing, and it was still meaningful. But most of the ritual was drained from it while we were in lockdown.

I think that experience clarified for many people – for me at least – the value of the ritual as we experience it now. We know there is a reason behind it, it’s not an empty or meaningless ritual.

Rituals are meant to be doorways into an experience. But they are not meant to be the experience, just the entrance into it. Rituals open us into deeper realities. Those realities exist with or without the rituals. Unfortunately, the rituals can also exist with or without a connection to the deeper realities. Thus, they can become meaningless or empty rituals. But when the connection is true, rituals serve as a doorway to meaningful spaces.

Rituals are something we enact. We have bodies. A significant part of what is happening in a ritual is that we are not merely thinking about it and about what it means; we are also enacting it. Our bodies are participating. Anyone who has done sports or dance, martial arts or yoga or weightlifting will recognize what I mean when I say: our bodies have a form of knowing, a wisdom – maybe it is more accurate to say our bodies have a connection to our brains that is different than what we often call ‘thinking.’ Our bodies carry memory and wisdom.

Showing up, going through the steps, lighting the candles, ringing the bells, bowing down, saying the words, closing our eyes and sitting in silence – the action we take with our bodies opens us, serves as the entrance point, is the doorway into the spaces of meaning and value. The rituals must be embodied.

Hecht’s advice to the non-religious yearning for comfort and meaning is not simply to go find a good poem. She tells people to read the poem out loud, find a particular place to read the poem, read it again on the anniversary. In other words: enact it, embody it.

In many ways, what Hecht is suggesting for an individual is similar to what we are doing as a community together in this congregation. Our community’s rituals are enacted in our bodies. It’s not enough to only share our Joys and Sorrows with each other. When we do it in the worship service together, we need to embody the work as well. So we light candles and respond with a small slip of poetry for each other.

We light our chalice and each week we say different words, but the words are important. They are a small poem of words we say that mean something – ritual and reason. We extinguish it each week reciting the same poem every week. We have our covenant and doxology words; we sing Spirit of Life together most weeks. I know people have memorized some of these and it can turn into a reciting. It is good to stop every now and then to really consider the words. Do you mean them? Are they still connected to values you actually hold? Is there integrity in the rituals and ceremonies for you? Ritual and reason! The doorways ought to take you somewhere of value, somewhere meaningful.

May the words of our mouths, the meditations of our hearts and minds, lead us deeper in the mysteries and realities that uphold life – that we may live in our integrity and thrive together in life abundant.

In a world without end,

May it be so.

The Taming of Foxes

12-10-23

Rev. Douglas Taylor

Sermon video: https://youtu.be/aI3p8CVOvuM

“What does that mean – ‘tame’?” The Little Prince asked the fox.

“It is an act too often neglected,” said the fox. “It means to establish ties.”

My sermon today is about establishing ties. The heart of our Unitarian Universalist congregation is the establishing of ties; it is about connection. There are many reasons why you who are here have chosen to keep showing up. You may be here for the amazing music or the uplifting message, you may be here for the stories or the rituals of candles and silence. It might be for the free coffee after the service, or something less tangible like the feeling of belonging or of being part of something larger than yourself. A very common reason is for community.

People do not usually join Unitarian Universalist congregations to be forgiven of their sins, or to be taught the right way to believe, or because their family expects it of them. We come – more often than not – for community, to be together with other people who share our values of respect and curiosity, compassion and justice, truth and love. Our work as a congregation is to establish ties, to build those connections, to create a congregation together.

In Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s book The Little Prince (which we used for our reading this morning,) the fox talks about this as being ‘tamed.’ To be tamed, according to the fox, is to see the one who has tamed you as unique and very important – and in turn, you become very important and unique to them. To see and be seen, to know and be known. The Fox tells the Little Prince this is what it means to be tame.

I received a new game a few days ago that relates to all of this. It was a game I supported on kickstarter over a year ago, and it finally arrived a little over a week ago. I’m very excited by this new game. It’s called “The Fox Experiment,” and the premise is based on the decades-long scientific efforts to domesticate foxes by the Soviets that began in 1958. In real life, Dmitri Belyaev and Lyudmila Trut gathered a group of Russian silver foxes and bred the ones that showed the most interest in humans. Each successive generation was again selected for friendliness, only the friendliest pups became parents. The hope was to recreate the thousand-year long domestication process of dogs in the span of a few decades for these foxes.

In the game, you build a deck of fox pups working to increase traits like floppy ears, wagging tails, and spots on their fur. Each new fox is given a friendliness rating in the game. The higher the friendliness rating, the more dice you get to build the next generation. In the real experiment, the scientists also gave each fox what they called a friendliness rating.

Assuming, for a moment, I am correct that our congregation’s work is to establish ties – what do you think your friendliness rating might be? The fox told de Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince that to be tame was to establish ties. So maybe our UUCB mission statement should say something about taming one another?

I’m not suggesting we actually do that. “Taming” has a paternalistic tone that doesn’t sit well – as if the only value of an animal is in relation to humans. But consider this a playful entrance into the serious space in which we talk about how we are here to establish ties, to make friendly connections together.

My colleague Cynthia Snavely once summed up our faith saying, ‘Connection is our holiest word.’ The Latin root of the word ‘religion’ is ‘ligare,’ the same root for ‘Ligament,” to tie or bind, to connect! Re-ligare – or Religion – would be to re-bind, to re-connect. We Unitarian Universalist ministers do like to tease out the Latin of roots of our language now and then. 

All around us are forces pulling us apart. We live in disconnected and alienating times. There are powers that want us isolated and lonely so as to be more easily manipulated and controlled. I don’t mean this at a conspiracy theory level – it’s just become a tactic for our consumeristic culture. And we are better consumers when we are isolated and lonely. As Unitarian Universalists we make a commitment to reconnect. Our distinctive religious work as a faith community, is the work of connection.

There are a few reliable ways to build these connections here together. If you attend Sunday morning worship regularly, that is certainly a good thing. But how well do we get to know each other during that hour? Certainly we are holding the silence together, we are listening to amazing music and uplifting messages together. The candles of Joys and Sorrows opens up some invitations to connections with the other people in the room. The announcements become very important when you look at like this. But most of this hour of worship is preparation time for the connections that we make outside of this hour in our congregation.

To establish ties and deepen your relationships in this congregation, it helps to do more than just show up on Sunday mornings. Join the choir, host a table at the Art and Gift Show or help in the kitchen, teach a class, serve as an usher or on the Caring Team. One reliable way to establish ties, and to really become a member of this community, is to serve in some fashion: to offer your gift, to volunteer, to be of use in some way.

The other reliable way is to receive. Join a class, a book discussion, a workshop, or our Chalice Circles program as a way to learn something new; but often as important – it is an opportunity to meet people and get to know them … and to get known. Unitarian Universalism does not work well as a spectator religion. We are here to build community together, to participate in creating what we are as a congregation. You have a role in that process – in the giving and receiving that creates this community of connections in which we thrive.

We have a new program starting up next month: our new Chalice Circles program. You can sign up throughout December. When you join, you commit to attending once a month until the summer. Each group has facilitators and a covenant, they follow the monthly Soul Matters themes and there are activities and questions for you to respond to. If you join one of these groups, you will be invited to share your responses to questions together.

In September, when the Soul Matters theme was “Welcome,” we had questions like these:

1. Who welcomed you in when you needed it most?
2. What would you tell someone younger than yourself about welcoming in grief?
3. Do you know what it’s like to encounter a welcome that requires you to remove parts of yourself to belong? 

In October, when the Soul Matters theme was “Heritage,” we had this activity:

We all have one: a favorite family memento that holds something important about our family heritage and history. Most of the time, these mementos also keep us grounded in a value or offer us comfort or inspiration when we need it most.

So this month reflect on one of your favorite family mementos and figure out why it has such a hold on you? If possible, bring that memento with you to show to your group.

Each month, you’ll receive an activity and a handful of questions to consider – all based around the Soul Matters theme. Let me try something a little different. Instead of just posing these questions rhetorically, I’ll ask one, invite you to think a moment, and then – if you want – to turn to a neighbor to respond briefly. You are always free to pass.

In many ways, the process of our Chalice Circles involves deep listening. You spend some time thinking about what you will say in your own response, but then you spend a lot of time listening to other people’s responses. Deep listening is a key ingredient to the process. So here is this morning’s big question:

Who first offered you the gift of deep listening?

Take a moment in silence with that question: Who first offered you the gift of deep listening?

…        ~15 seconds

And if you would like, I invite you to turn to a neighbor. You can always pass – participation is never required (wave hand, to signal refusal) but always encouraged. If you would like, turn to a neighbor and take about a minute to share your response and listen their response. I’ll ring the bowl to call your attention back to the full group.

…        ~90 seconds

Rev. Scott Tayler, the lead organizer of Soul Matters, has said the model they offer for small group discussion is a discernment model. In the circle, we use a twice-around process. The first time around, you respond to your question and listen to others as they respond. There is no cross-talk or conversation.

The second time around, there can be some back and forth. We do ‘gratitudes and connections.’ It is a time to say “I really connected with what you shared because I had a similar experience,” or “I appreciate what you said because I’d never thought of it like that before,” or something else along those lines – gratitudes and connections.

It is in this second time around that we build the relationships of the group. The first time around is for your discernment and your listening. It is a powerful experience to know yourself and to be known by others.

Once a month, your group will gather. The facilitators will have shared material ahead for you to think about, they will light a candle and share opening words. You’ll have a brief check-in together: What is one thing weighing on your spirit today and one thing lifting your spirit? Then you’ll do the ‘twice-around’ process with the activity, I used the example of the Family Memento exercise. After that you’ll do the ‘twice around’ process again with the questions. From there, you close with a time for ‘likes and wishes’ and a final reading.

There is a formula, a noticeable structure to the process. “One must observe the proper rites.” The fox tells the little prince. The structure of the Chalice Circles time shapes the space for a level of sharing. In the fox’s language, it is designed to tame us. Perhaps better to say, it is to establish the ties so that we are not strangers to each other. Our Chalice Circles are a way to strengthen the heart of our community through meaning-making and simple friendships.

We are social creatures. We need each other to be fully ourselves. There is still a place and a need for us to embrace the wilder side of ourselves – to howl at the moon or get angry about injustices. We will need to be wild from time to time. And we need the balance of enough gentleness and friendliness as well – to take part in the creating of important things like community.

It is important for our balanced wellbeing to have connections with other people, to have ties with groups that nourish us and lead us deeper into ourselves in the service of that which is greater than ourselves.

Come, let us build this congregation together, that we may all thrive.

In a world without end,

May it be so.

Both Sides

Rev. Douglas Taylor

May 21, 2023

Sermon video: https://youtu.be/75Ox3CqTqBA

Joni Mitchell’s music has had a big impact on my growing up. I appreciate our choir bringing one of her songs to us this morning. This song, “Both Sides Now” captures the wistful and nuanced layers of growing up, the disillusionment, and reimagining that can happen with adolescence and adulthood.

In the song, she opens with the early, romantic imaginings about life and love. Then she unpacks the jarring realities often discovered about pain and loss – the disillusionment; the sadness of it all that can lead a person to become jaded. But then, with a twist, she reflects back on it all and chooses the romantic options anyway, saying she really doesn’t know life or love at all.

Joni’s strength as a songwriter is not limited to her lyrics – but her lyrics are certainly a key component to her work. She lays such beauty out before us, showing the highs and lows of living with such poignancy.

Many of her songs have this layer of poignancy, a sorrowful yearning. In our reading this morning from the book Bittersweet by Susan Cain, we heard about how creativity is often linked with a certain sadness or melancholy. The piece we heard from the book began with the question: “Is creativity associated with sorrow and longing, through some mysterious force?”

At other points in that chapter, Cain writes about Beethoven and what he went through creating his 9^th Symphony and particularly the section we know as the “Ode to Joy” – a piece of work so exultant and yet laced with sorrow. The author also wrote about the life of Leonard Cohan, the artist most associated with the song “Hallelujah” and whose life is certainly an example of a ‘broken hallelujah’ in many ways. Is the melancholy suffering a required cost for this level of phenomenal creativity?

Cain is quick to assure readers on this point. It is not so much suffering that is required so much as a bittersweet disposition.

We shouldn’t make the mistake of viewing darkness as the sole or even primary catalyst to creativity. [Cain writes early in the book] After all, plenty of creatives are sanguine types. And studies also show that flashes of insight are more likely to happen when we’re in a good mood. We also know that clinical depression – which we might think of as an emotional black hole obliterating all light – kills creativity. As Columbia University psychiatry professor Philip Muskin told The Atlantic magazine, “Creative people are not creative when they’re depressed.” (Cian, Bittersweet, p60)

The image of creative people as tortured souls simply is not accurate. And it is not what this book, Bittersweet, is about. I think it is more accurate to say creativity is less about sorrow and suffering and more closely linked to yearning tinged with a sadness – the sadness seems to be a necessary component, but not sufficient on its own. Susan Cain did not, after all, title her book ‘bitter.’

In her book, Cain is exploring the concept of ‘bittersweet’ as an experience and perspective. And this is not just about creative artists, it’s about all people. All of us experience grief and sorrow, loss and pain. The experience of the bittersweet is an acknowledgement of that sorrow and pain. But the goal is not to be sad. The goal is to take life whole. To allow sorrow a full share, but not the whole share.

In the Jewish book of wisdom, Kohelet – also known as Ecclesiastes – we hear that our lives are filled with beginnings and endings, with gathering and casting away, with breaking down and building up, with dancing and with mourning “and a time for every purpose under heaven.” Kohelet, like Susan Cain in her book about the bittersweet, calling us to take life whole, to not refuse portions because they are hard or laced with sorrow.

As Unitarian Universalists, we have this practice of sharing our joys and sorrows most Sundays. It is a common enough ritual among us as to be recognizable if you’ve been to other UU congregations. We invite you, share the ups and downs of your living – to recognize these happy and sad experiences as important and worthy of sharing in our worship together. One piece of the ritual I honor is that we don’t parse out the joys from the sorrows – they are all mixed together. It can be jarring to hear about a death or a grief and then swiftly move on to hear about a birthday or recovery. And occasionally someone will offer something that is both a joy and a sorrow. It is best to not draw to fine a distinction. It is best to allow all of the joys and sorrows to sit beside each other, jostling for attention and care. Because this is how life really is.

My point, Susan Cain’s point, Joni Mitchell’s point, the point of the author of Ecclesiastes is simply this: Sorrow should not be sequestered away as if it is something shameful. It is part of our living and indeed may opening us up to some of the more remarkable aspects of our living. In our sorrow, we reveal our compassion. I am, this morning, not offering an ode to sorrow. Instead, I am saying our sorrow is the signal that we care.

Consider: we have days of light and days of clouds. We live in the shadow of our losses and the bright light of new love. We all have both light and shadow. It is the way of nature and all life. It is the light we want, the joy we share with others; but sorrow and shadow are present as well. If we only see the clouds and shadows as negative, we are missing an important part of what is happening.

Think for a moment about the times you have seen sunlight, actually seen a ray of sunshine. Perhaps it was a photograph or an experience while out in nature. Can you recall? When the light shines out through a cloud bank or breaks through the trees or shines in the early morning through the window across the dust of your room; and you actually see the ray of sunlight? Have you seen that? It is as if the sun beam has a definite shape, a width and length you could measure.

The sunbeam in such an experience is clear because it is partly blocked by the trees or by clouds by the window. Unfiltered light shines everywhere; but we notice it, we see it, when it is flickering or when it is filtered through shadow, when it is a little obstructed. I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now. They are both the feathered canyons and that which blocks the sun. And really, both are worth it.

Here is the real secret. With Joni’s song we are invited to see both sides of life and love and clouds – both! We are invited to feel the joy and the sorrow, the give and take, win and lose. And the secret is the way it is presented as two options and yet the song calls us into the third option which is both. Not one or the other, but both.   

A few years ago, I bumped into and took great solace in a blog post by Richard Rohr. Rohr is a process theologian I find to be very accessible. He was writing about order and disorder through a metaphor of “three boxes.” We begin, our theologian claims, with order. We call it normal. That is his first box. We then experience a disruption, a time of disorder, something that upsets the way we want things to be. This is the second box. And, he continues, if we keep at it, we can find our way into reorder. This is not a return to who things used to be; it is instead a reordering of toward the future given what has happened. Richard Rohr wrote, “Whenever we’re led out of normalcy into sacred, open space, it’s going to feel like suffering, because it is letting go of what we’re used to.” https://cac.org/the-three-boxes-2016-12-06/

Essentially, he was advocating for the value of disorder. He could have as easily written about imperfection or suffering or grief. He picked a more neutral concept: disorder. The second box in his metaphor of ‘three boxes’ is disorder. You could equally think of it as the progression from thesis and antithesis into synthesis. Or perhaps: sunlight and clouds, and the sunbeams that arise from the interplay of light and shadow.

This is not meant as a moral judgment about light vs darkness, joy vs sorrow, order vs disorder. Instead, it is an acknowledgment of comfort and discomfort, and the values of each. “This is always painful at some level,” Rohr writes in his blog, describing the move from the first box ‘order’ to the second box ‘disorder’; “But part of us has to die if we are ever to grow larger” In John’s Gospel, Jesus says, “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” (NIV; John 12:24)

Joni Mitchell’s song describes her child-like, romantic imaginings about life and love. She then reveals the jarring disillusionment and hurt, the sadness of it all that can lead a person to become jaded. That’s Rohr’s second box: the disorder. And Joni Mitchell’s song then, suggests not simply a return to the first perspective but an appreciation of the original romantic view through the lens of the lived heartbreak and sorrow.

The goal is never to remain in the grief or the jaded heartbreak. The goal is take life whole; to live all of it. Listen to this piece from writer and activist Adrienne Maree Brown.  

Put your attention on suffering – which is constant and everywhere – and it is all you will see. Joy will come, and laughter, but you will find it brief, possibly a distraction.

Put your attention on joy, being connected and feeling whole, and you will find it everywhere. Your heart will still break. You will know grief. But you will find it a reasonable cost for the random abundance of miracles, and the soft wild rhythms of love.

Brown is sharing here the same message I take from Joni Mitchell’s song. You can look at both sides now, from suffering and joy, and still somehow, it is the joy we will recall. In the song, Joni calls them illusions. Her early romantic versions of clouds and love and life are – according to her – illusions. This is the one big point on which I would argue with the amazing Joni Mitchell.

Yes, clouds are not really feathered canyons. Seeing them as angel’s hair is indeed a playful illusion. I will concede those descriptions of clouds as illusions. But to say the dizzy dancing way we feel when we are in love is a illusion is simply not true. It is certainly not all there is to being in love, but that exciting ‘falling in love’ time is not an illusion. And, I would argue, the counter part she offers of ‘if you care, don’t let them know – don’t give yourself away,’ is not to be commended as a better way to show love. That is more about protecting your broken heart than it is about the illusion of love. Certainly, your heart can be broken if you give it away – that part of what Joni is saying is true. But that’s what it is to love. That’s not naive or delusional, that’s just the risk we take when we love.

And so it is with life too. Life is meant to be a risk of love and faith. It is not something to be done shielded and in fear. The better way, living openly and with all the tears and fears that go with it is not an illusion. That is, as I say, the better way.

And when Joni ends each chorus saying she recalls the open and vulnerable way best – that is what Adrienne Marie Brown is saying too. Approach from the side of joy, Brown says, but be open and vulnerable to both the sorrow and the joy in life and all will be well. It will be bittersweet, to be sure. But that is how life is.

Consider the interplay of light and shadow, the dynamic interchange of joy and sorrow, the wild poignancy of your living. Be not locked into what has always been. It is not safety we find in being well-shielded from sorrow and loss, but stagnation and death. Release your fears, trust that the risks of sorrow and sadness are worth it more often than not.

In so doing, our lives will be both a little more bitter and a little more sweet. And what’s more – they will be whole. Let us have faith that such a life will lead us deeper into the fullness of living.

In a world without end,

May it be so.