Sermons 2026-27

The World We Long For
Rev. Douglas Taylor
8-30-26

Sertmon Video: https://youtu.be/iDr2ybW7LlA

Last Sunday, after leading worship here in morning, I met up with other people of faith for a Peace Walk in Otsiningo Park. This was our second annual interfaith Peace Walk. It feels good to have this positive activity together. The local interfaith group has been struggling in recent years. After covid and the shut downs, many faith communities felt the need to focus internally. We did. As folks were beginning to reach out again, the war between Israel and Gaza erupted, and locally we did not have the strength of relationship in place to navigate that together. It has been slow work to rebuild trust and come back together across our various communities of faith.

As one of the leaders in the interfaith community, I was pushing for us to keep it simple; to have discussions about the simple value of interfaith connections. In essence I suggested we not talk about the big divisive topic of the day, at least initially. Delightfully, last year we invited people to come together to offer prayers and walk together for peace. With wars and violence happening in the name of faith, we decided to meet each other in an activity for peace in the name of faith.

This is indirect – we’re not talking about genocide or about who is harming whom. We are not addressing the problem we all recognize, though we recognize it from different directions to be sure. But we are talking about what we’d like to see happening instead of the war and violence. We are talking together about the world we long for. It is a step. We are rebuilding local connections and relationships.

About three dozen of us gathered, Muslim, Christian, Pagan, Jewish, and Unitarian Universalist. A few of the clergy and lay leaders offered prayers. Then we split up into pairs or small clusters to walk around the park together with the conversation prompt: “What does your faith say about Peace?”

I walked with a retired doctor of the Muslim faith. He talked about what Islam teaches him about peace, about how his healing work as a doctor is a form of being true to the teachings of his faith about peace. I spoke about how my Unitarian Universalist faith calls me to practice justice and compassion on the road toward peace. I talked about how my faith says peace will come if we can build a true Beloved Community where all are cared for and injustices are addressed.

One of the deep values of Unitarian Universalism is Pluralism – the celebration of our diverse cultures, experiences, and theologies. We strive to live that value among ourselves as well as out in the community. We have an insert in the order of service today which shows the official Unitarian Universalist statement of values. https://www.uua.org/beliefs/shared-values You’ll see that Pluralism is one of the values we share.

If anyone asks you, “What is Unitarian Universalism? What do you all believe?” You can say – we are not a belief-centered religion, we are a values-centered religion. We have many different beliefs, but we gather around a set of values centered by Love.” And Pluralism is one of the values on our list.  

And thinking back to the conversation I was having at the peace walk, Justice is one of the values on our list. When injustices are addressed, peace can occur. As Unitarian Universalist we pay attention of systemic oppressions and work to build something better in response. Over this past week, for example, we’ve had roof work done on our building. This meant we also had to be careful about Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The way ICE shows up is different depending on the community – around here lately, they have been targeting roofers who are brown and black.

So our leadership made a commitment to make our property a little bit safer for our roofers by blocking our driveways and stationing volunteers to sit out front whenever the roofers were here working. This was a good deal of added labor on our part and very inconvenient for everyone – not just ICE. It impacted our ability to prepare for our annual Veggiefest. The prep work for Veggiefest is fairly extensive and involved. With the added difficulties around accessing the building and concerns about an ICE raid – preparing for Veggiefest was untenable. So, we canceled.

We do still have musicians playing Porchfest today; and the Flea Market sale is still on along with some root beer float sales. And we are giving away ice pops along with conversations about the negative impact of ICE on our communities. But we’re not having Veggiefest this year. Which helps highlight how living our values will sometimes mean things don’t work out the way we want. Living our values doesn’t mean there are no conflicts. But our values help us navigate these conflicts and difficulties among us. Our values also help us respond to what’s going wrong in the world.

I have several complaints about what’s going wrong in the world around me. The way ICE is roaming our cities like masked and armed gangs is deeply troubling. The way unhoused people are treated by our local government and police is inhumane and cruel. The constant and casual lying and corruption is infuriating. The erosions of our democracy, the predatory capitalism, the plundering of our environment, the deregulation of food and drug safety, and the rampant bigotry and hypocrisy of this current administration is staggering.

And!  … and I believe it is vital to have a clear vision of what I DO want. I have a long list of what is happening that I don’t want. But I cannot allow anger and indignation be my only response to it all. A set of values such as the official list of Unitarian Universalists values, gives me the framework for that affirming vision of the world we long for.

Here’s another example: This summer I had some back trouble which landed me in several doctors’ offices. Things are better now, but the suffering has shifted from physical pain to economic pain. We do not need to burden people with unreasonable medical debt – many other countries have figured this one out, yet we still do it. Economically, the country is in trouble. Many basic expenses like food and gas continue to rise, while medical debt, student loan debt, and housing costs sky rocket. It’s not sustainable – unless you happen to be one of the billions syphoning wealth off the rest of us. It’s sick.

But notice we have listed Generosity among our central Unitarian Universalist values. We, as a whole community, do what we can to share what we have to make the world a better place. We work to counter the avarice around us with compassion and attention. We are using our resources and several individuals are giving their time and energy to support vulnerable people in the community, to feeding people, bringing clothes and necessities to folks, treating people with dignity and respect. Generosity is not just about money; it’s about all our resources and how we share them.

The world we long for is a world rooted in the values that lift us up. Our Unitarian Universalist faith has constructed a list of values we hold as central, as defining for our identity as a religion. These values guide how we want to be as a religious community; and I argue they guide how us into the world we long to live in. I talked about and gave examples of Pluralism, Justice, and Generosity.

(And briefly, to say a word about each of the other values in our list…) We celebrate our Interdependence with our connectedness with nature and with each other. We honor the value of Equity with the way we treat all people with respect and dignity – each other and all those we partner with and who experience our activities in the community around us. And I am excited for the coming year and the offerings I will co-create for transformation and learning. All of this threaded though the central value of love!

And I want to be clear – this list of values we have is not exclusive or limiting. It’s just the list we came up with together through discussion and debate among thousands of UUs from hundreds of congregations over a span of more than 5 years just recently. But it is not to say there aren’t other values you find compelling or central to your understanding of love and faith.

We have some posters around the building that we made internally, they say

“Do you believe in kindness, peace, equality, love, inclusion, hope, and diversity? So do we.” Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Binghamton.

I want to be sure my list of values includes joy and grace and a sense of agency. I happen to like the term interconnected better than interdependent – but I still support the values listed in the official version of our UU values. I don’t need everything to fit me specifically or for every part of me to fit here – that’s just not realistic or necessary. This list is good, and good is good enough for us to heal each other and heal the world together.

In closing, I want to recast the reading we heard before the sermon. Rev. Scott Alexander’s “We Need a Religion” https://www.uua.org/worship/words/reading/we-need-religion paired various troubles in the world with the Seven UU Principles – that’s what we used to talk about our religion for about forty years before writing the new articulation about our values. I needed a new version, following Rev. Alexander’s structure, but following the values instead of the principles.

We Need a Religion   inspired by Scott W. Alexander (by Douglas Taylor)

In a world with so much tyranny and oppression,

We need a religion that values justice, and works to be diverse multicultural Beloved Communities where all thrive.

In a world with so much fear and violence,

We need a religion that values transformation, and calls us to grow spiritually and ethically, adapting to a changing world.

In a world with so many persons abused and neglected,

We need a religion that values equity, and declares that every person is inherently worthy and has the right to flourish with dignity, love and compassion.

In a world with so much dogmatism and falsehood,

We need a religion that values pluralism, and embraces our differences while celebrating our free and responsible search for truth and meaning.

In a world with so much greed and corruption,

We need a religion that values generosity, and cultivates in us a spirit of gratitude and hope, where we are connected to one another in mutuality.

In a world with so much personal isolation and environmental degradation,

We need a religion that values interdependence, and leads us to acknowledge our place in the great web of life with reverence and humility.

In a world with so much uncertainty and despair,

We need a religion that is centered on the value of love, and teaches our hearts to hope, and our hands to care.

—

In a world without end,

May it be so

Wild Wonder
Rev. Douglas Taylor
8-23-26
Sermon Video: https://youtu.be/KhREu2uqyb8

Researchers call it “soft fascination.” Which makes it sound like a new-age meditation technique. Soft fascination is a state of effortless, gentle attention. Which is almost, maybe a meditation technique. But really, Soft Fascination is when your mind focuses on gentle environmental stimuli: think dappled sunlight on trees or creek water trickling around stones or branches swaying in the breeze. We are drawn to such sounds and movement in nature – not as a meditation technique, simply as a reality. We all do it. And it’s not because they are loud and amazing or demanding of our attention; but precisely because they are not.

Evolutionarily, these sounds and motions are a sign that all’s well – no danger or threat looming. Watching a thunder storm from a dry porch is certainly an amazing experience. Standing at the Grand Canyon is a phenomenal way to gain perspective. But that’s not the experience researchers are talking about. It is instead the soft, gentle, effortless stimuli we are naturally drawn to which allow our otherwise overtaxed minds to rest and heal.

And, I will add – this is not just cool background sounds like from a white noise machine – although such devices are not unhelpful. It’s not background. This experience of “soft fascination” is when your attention is on the experience. Studies have shown for decades that experiences of Soft Fascination are calming and restorative.

Other studies highlight benefits with stress reduction and anxiety reduction. There are studies about blood pressure, and pain perception, and general immune support. One hitch is that folks struggle to determine exactly why being in nature this way helps. We just know that it does.

I have always loved the woods and wilderness. I love the wilderness from my experiences growing up with many opportunities to explore and play and (every now and then) to simply be in the woods near my home. I grew up in the Bushnell Basin near to where the Erie Canal runs through the southern suburbs of Rochester, NY. Glaciers created the basin long ago, which accounts for the many sudden hills and lowlands. Across the street from my house was one such lowland. The ground dropped down several dozen feet to a broad swath of trees and clearings that we called The Flats. (not really enough to count as ‘wilderness’ but as a child it was enough.)

Every spring and fall the Flats would become a maze of flooded creeks and overgrown puddles, and all winter there would thick patches of ice everywhere. The land was not useful for farming or development and so was left to go wild with trees and shrubs, left to grow wild for the imagination and exploration of children.

Once I was old enough to be outside on my own, I spent nearly every nice afternoon down in the flats. I wandered a stretch of several miles, sometimes with a friend or sibling, more often alone. I explored, learning the boundary of the creek, memorizing where flats turned to cornfield, finding the biggest trees, making up games, having adventures.

I developed a strong sense of ownership to the Flats. ‘Ownership’ is too possessive a word – I developed a strong sense of identifying with the Flats. Like the wilderness was a gift for me to open anew each day. I spent years down there, like it was an extension of my own home.

When I read about environmental psychologists studying the benefits of being in nature, I am reminded of the woods of my youth. When I hear people talk about hiking or camping, I am reminded of the woods of my youth.  When I venture out into the woods as an adult, I am reminded of the woods of my youth.

There is a potion of Walt Witman’s poem, Leaves of Grass that I’ve always identified with. “There was a child went forth every day,” Whitman wrote. And I was that child.
And the first object he looked upon and received with wonder or pity or love or dread, that object he became, And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day … or for many years or stretching cycles of years. The early lilacs became part of this child, And grass, and white and red morning glories, and white and red clover, and the song of the phœbe-bird

Whitman continues, listing many things in nature and people that became part of this child. The point he makes is that such encounters form our identities. Time in nature, or in any setting really, shapes who we become. I think we tend to down play the impact such experiences can have on children in particular. As adults we can still have formative experiences, but our brains are most ready for such things when we are younger.

When people think about ‘spiritual experiences’ we usually imagine big events, like a grand epiphany or dramatic turning point. What if a regular childhood practice like rambling through the woods could count as a spiritual experience. What if we’re talking about simple quiet experiences? Not just the grand dramatic ones?

In her most recent book The Wonder Paradox, philosopher, poet, professor Jennifer Michael Hecht writes about the value of poetry for non-religious people to engage in the thing religious people call ‘spiritual experiences.’ Her book explores how poetry can open us to wonder and awe. She offers a biographical context for herself early in the book:

My physicist father didn’t believe in God by kept quiet about it when we kids were young. I believed from the time my mother told me God was there until one day when I was twelve, standing in my parents’ living room, when I had an uncanny mental shift. I suddenly knew I might be anybody, anywhere, but instead I happened to be here, being me.

The proximate cause was ordinary loveliness: a steep slant of late-afternoon light serrated in the folds of a diaphanous blue curtain; nylon maybe. Yellow sunlight in a glowing fabric curlicue. I saw that we are just one species among great nature, and as the trees very slowly rot, so do our pampered haunches. That’s it. There is no reason to imagine a guy in the sky bowling to make thunder and brooding over how we fail him. Then the sounds of the world returned to my hearing. I never lost interest in such perspective shifts and I never again believed. (pp5-6)

I was fascinated by her description. One person can see a shaft of sunlight through the curtains and interprets a loving God, another the utter lack of a God, and still another can take no meaning whatsoever beyond that it is lovely. My point is less about the conclusions we may reach and more about honoring that such moments can and do shape us profoundly.

Hecht called what she experienced a ‘perspective shift.’ Perhaps it is this perspective shift that makes an ordinary experience of “soft fascination” into a spiritual experience. I’m beginning to devolve into analysis of semantics, for which I apologize. I’m very interested in our experiences of the natural world that lead us into wonder and healing.

I recently pawed through an old copy of the book The Geography of Childhood (1994). The book is a series of essays by naturalists Gary Nabhan and Stephen Trimble in which they present their hypothesis that children need wild places in their lives. Using mostly stories from their own lives and the lives of their children along with a sound base of theory, the authors make a compelling case. The hypothesis is not that everyone needs wild places, but that children need wild places.

Children in particular need wild places for developmental reasons. Surveys claim that less that ten percent of adults see the quality of the environment as an important issue, “over ninety percent of our children feel it is the major issue in their lives.” (p 40) They are drawn to wild places like moths to a flame. My experiences and feelings about nature fit well with what these authors suggest.

I remember how they talked about studies done around how young children use school playgrounds. In one situation, 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.” (p 66) Then they watched the children to see where and how they played. One aspect they found was how “the natural area of the playground saw wider ranges of activities and more mixing of the genders.” (Ibid) The bit of asphalt they left was used primarily by boys for competitive ball games. This is how some of 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 the wilderness.

Slides and swings and playground climbing equipment are all really great. Kids love those things. They are exciting. And there is something altogether different and important found in wild spaces. All experiences of wonder are important and valuable. That experience of pumping on the swing and getting up so high! Holding on to a powerful ATV or snowmobile as the landscape flies past! Visiting the elephants at the zoo! All of these experiences can be experiences of wonder. They are curated, contained, commercialized. And they’re good.

But wild wonder is something else. Wild wonder is nourished by chirping crickets and shifting patches of sunlight, burbling creek water and fields of undulating wheat moving like waves on the ocean. Wild wonder hums and shines in a way that eases our minds and brings spiritual restoration. Wild wonder allows your nervous system to settle and heal. We are drawn to these natural experiences. We don’t need to force our minds to be empty or to recite the supplication in the correct way. We simply need to show up and allow our brains to do would they might naturally do when offered the context of the gentle natural world – to experience wonder.

May we each fall in love anew with the quiet murmurings of the natural world. May we ‘rest in the grace of the world.” May we be led into the presence of “green pastures” and “still water.” May we re-acquaint ourselves with the companionable ease found in being present where we belong – in nature, among the dappled leaves and gentle buzz of life. May you slip into moments of Soft Fascination. May it bring you rest. May it restore your soul.

In a world without end

May it be so

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