Spending Our Lives
“Near the end of March, 1845,” says Henry David Thoreau in Walden, “I borrowed an axe and went down to the woods by Walden Pond, nearest to where I intended to build my house, and began to cut down some tall arrowy white pines, still in their youth, for timber. It is difficult to begin without borrowing….” Ever afterwards, the question of whose axe Thoreau borrowed has been an open one. Was it Emerson’s? Bronson Alcott’s? Ellery Channing’s? What we can know is that, this morning, as we contemplate our own experiment in living more simply and wisely, we borrow Thoreau’s angle of vision. We borrow the bent of his genius which, as Thoreau himself wryly admits, is “a very crooked one.” We do what he did: “see our native village as if we were a traveler passing through,” “to think new thoughts and have new imaginings, for the deepest and most original thinker is the farthest traveled.” We borrow all this from Thoreau as we begin deliberate travel through our own native village, seeing everything with new questioning eyes as we pass through. And as for where each of us ends up? Once, Thoreau tells us, “a young man of my acquaintance … told me that he thought he should live as I did, if he had the means. [But] I would not have anyone adopt my mode of living on any account. […] I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father’s or his mother’s or his neighbor’s instead.” Robert Sullivan, in his excellent biography of Thoreau entitled The Thoreau You Don’t Know, puts it like this: “Thoreau doesn’t offer answers. His is the analysis that leads to the questions. For application purposes, you can apply Thoreau to any question, not to find the answer, but to imagine how he might pose it anew. When you ask what car to drive, imagine Thoreau asking where you are going, or if the car is driving you…”
We borrow all this, as we begin pursuing our own way. Not an axe, but an angle of vision, the bent of a genius, a way of making the familiar strange, a manner of questioning. The first chapter of Walden is entitled “Economy,” but characteristically, Thoreau invites us to use this word not in its conventional sense of wealth creation or fiscal frugality. He wants us to go straight to the ancient Greek origin of the word—oikonomia—which means caring for the household, a holistic way of living in which your use of life resources is in alignment with vital values of freedom and sustainability and beauty. “I am convinced,” he says, “both by faith and experience, that to maintain one’s self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely.” “Economy,” he says, “is synonymous with philosophy.” This is how he uses the term in the first chapter of what has become, in the 155 years since it was published, sacred scripture for Unitarian Universalists today.
Economy is about how you maintain yourself on this earth. Could be a joyful pastime, but what Thoreau discovers as he travels through his own native village of Concord is people experiencing something very different. Just listen to some of his observations:
“Most men … through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. […] The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat each ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.”
Or this: “The childish and savage taste of men and women for new [clothing] patterns keeps how many shaking and squinting through kaleidoscopes that they may discover the particular figure which this generation requires to-day. The manufacturers have learned that this taste is merely whimsical. Of two patterns which differ only by a few threads more or less of a particular color, the one will be sold readily, the other lie on the shelf, though it frequently happens that after the lapse of a season the latter becomes the most fashionable.”
Or this: “As with our colleges, so with a hundred ‘modern improvements;’ there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. […] Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end…. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas, but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.”
Or this: “One farmer says to me, ‘You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bone with;’ and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plough along in spite of every obstacle.”
Or this: “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.”
All are observations Thoreau makes as he travels through his native village of Concord. One after another indicates not joyful pastime, but hardship of some kind or other, and perhaps they echo observations you yourself have made, as you’ve traveled through your own village of Atlanta or elsewhere. The rush and gush of our days; time crunch in an era of so-called time-saving devices; “no time to be anything but a machine.” Or how our culture aims at creating more wants in us (rather than focusing on genuine needs)—churns out expert consumers who are fine-tuned to fashion trends but are blind to more important trends of intellect and heart and soul. How communication technologies today are far more powerful than any of the dreams of yesterday and yet still we can question the value of what is being communicated: obnoxious opinions of know-nothing demagogues; undigested data without pattern or context or meaning—“as if the main object were to talk fast and not talk sensibly.” Or people around us, not paying attention to the evidence of their experience, unconsciously in the grip of beliefs that they have never personally questioned or tested: Thoreau’s farmer condemning vegetarianism even as the vital oxen who unfailingly plough his fields are themselves… vegetarian. Finally, all the do-gooders in our world, unconsciously in the grip of the belief that they themselves are not embroiled in the injustice that they try to ease, that they are strong while others are weak—and so through their do-gooding, they administer band-aids and aspirin, never realizing that far more is needed, radical change needed, the kind of change we need today, for example, in health care. Hardship, in the economy of our time as well as in Thoreau’s, and so no wonder the first chapter of Walden is full of sharp social critique and satire, pages howling with anger and pain. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” he cries. “From the desperate city you go to the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats.” In other words, to bolster your courage, you’ll have to rely on the example of furry little animals, because human examples are simply hard to come by. “I have traveled a good deal in Concord,” says Thoreau, “and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.”
There has got to be a better way. A better way of maintaining ourselves upon this earth. In fact, that’s the core of the problem right there. People don’t think that alternatives exist. “They honestly think that there is no choice left. But,” says Thoreau, “alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices.” “Man’s capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little has been tried.” “What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.” All of these, golden lines of hope. Alternatives do exist, and we can find them. But we must put ourselves out there, in some liminal, in-between space, where creative solutions can find us. Let that be our self-culture practice. We have to borrow Thoreau’s genius, which is a very crooked one, and risk being misunderstood by our family and our peers, risk harm to our reputation. Shift the nature of our business, towards trying to hear what the wind is saying.
This is what led Thoreau to borrow an axe and begin his social experiment of one at Walden Pond. To see if his humanity could be recovered from the machine-like schedule of his days. To escape the tyranny of a consumeristic culture, and peel away all artificial wants to get down to essential needs. To discover what is worth communicating—to write out his heart and soul. To test his beliefs and see which ones actually reflect and extend his real experience. Not to be a reactive do-gooder, but to better understand the evils and problems of our world—distinguish roots from branches—and attack the roots, take his axe and chop at that. “It would be of some advantage,” he says, “to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessaries of life and what methods are used to obtain them. […] For the improvements of the ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man’s existence; as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.” Thoreau goes to Walden to return to essentials, and to sanity. He is a Transcendentalist.
Now I will tell you plainly that the first time I picked up Walden, I had no idea what this guy was talking about. I was in the eighth grade, and I had heard that the book was a classic. Being a student in the gifted and talented program at my school—being a future member of my high school’s I. Q. Booster Club—how could I not want to check it out? I found it in paperback, there on a dark dusty wooden shelf, wedged in tightly among other classics. The cover was not promising—had a weird-looking guy on it with a neck beard. Did he just forget to shave his neck? What’s up with that? I flipped through the pages: tiny print, no picture. Uuugh. Then I started to read. Sentences that had way too many phrases and commas in them, each like long tangled thread. References to Greek and Roman mythology, world religions, science; allusions to stuff I could only vaguely sense. Now, I know that Thoreau is like a contemporary Unitarian Universalist preacher in that he builds the nest of his thought from many sources of insight and wisdom; now, I know that he loved puns and paradox and wordplay, enough to drive his friend and mentor Emerson crazy; now, I know he believed that “in writing, conversation should be folded many times thick.” Now, I know—but then, not at all. Walden was indigestible. I struggled with it for a time, and then gave up.
Now I am in a different place in my life. Perhaps more mature; perhaps more able to navigate his conversation folded many times thick. Definitely hungering for an alternative to the quiet desperation that is contemporary life. And voluntary simplicity as a spiritual discipline sounds very good to me. To what degree does our genuine happiness and wellbeing depend on the clothing we wear, the shelter we possess, the food we eat, the work we do. Is there a way to “get one’s living honestly, with freedom left to pursue one’s proper pursuits”? “The more you have,” says Thoreau, “the poorer you are.” We don’t own our things; our things (or our debts) own us. Simplicity preserves an ability to journey freely through life; but a richness of things weighs us down, puts the cart before the horse, distorts and distracts, “cooks us a la mode.”
At times Thoreau is tongue-in-cheek hilarious as he figures out how to live his voluntary poverty principle. “I had three pieces of limestone on my desk,” he says, “but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and I threw them out the window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house? I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has broken ground.”
Or this story: “A lady once offered me a mat, but as I had no room to spare within the house, nor time to spare within or without to shake it, I declined it, preferring to wipe my feet on the sod before my door. It is best,” Thoreau concludes,” to avoid the beginnings of evil.”
And can you imagine being his friend? “I sometimes try my acquaintances,” he says, “by such tests as this;–who could wear a patch … over the knee? Most behave as if they believed that their prospects for life would be ruined if they should do it. It would be easier for them to hobble to town with a broken leg than with a broken pantaloon.” Is he right? Is this true? Are we so completely enslaved to keeping up appearances, when in reality all that matters is the inner person, the goodness of a heart, the clarity of a mind, the depth of a spirit?
Applying the voluntary simplicity principle in a consumeristic culture like ours seems hardly possible. Yet I wonder at the effects of at least trying. Reminds me of another story that Thoreau tells, about his axe: “One day, when my axe had come off and I had cut a green hickory for a wedge, driving it with a stone, and had placed the whole to soak in a pond hole in order to swell the wood, I saw a striped snake run into the water, and he lay on the bottom, apparently without inconvenience, as long as I staid there, or more than a quarter of an hour; perhaps because he had not yet fairly come out of the torpid state. It appeared to me that for a like reason men remain in their present low and primitive condition; but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life.” That’s the story. We are the snake in its torpid state. Yet there is a spring of springs that can arouse us, and raise us up to a higher and more ethereal life.
Above all, this higher life is one of trust. “I think we may safely trust a good deal more than we do,” he says. “Nature is well adapted to our weakness as to our strength. The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well night incurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do: and yet how much is not done by us! or, what if we had been taken sick? How vigilant we are! determined not to live by faith is we can avoid it; all the day long on the alert….” Perhaps the root of all evil is none other than this—our pride—and to it, we must take the axe of voluntary simplicity. Greater than anything we can do or any thing we can own is the world’s graciousness, its simple things; we can trust that life is worth living, no matter what.
This is what the first chapter of Walden is all about. Describes nothing less than a hero journey in the economy of life, picks up huge themes like suffering, the quest for healing, discovery, renewal. Thoreau’s unique angle of vision on all this is what we borrow, as we begin. I’ll close with a poem by Norah Pollard that puts it all in perfect and precise cameo:
I knew a woman who washed her hair and bathed
her body and put on the nightgown she’d worn
as a bride and lay down with a .38 in her right hand.
Before she did the thing, she went over her life.
She started at the beginning and recalled everything—
all the shame, sorrow, regret and loss.
This took her a long time into the night
and a long time crying out in rage and grief and disbelief—
until sleep captured her and bore her down.
She dreamed of a green pasture and a green oak tree.
She dreamed of cows. She dreamed she stood
under the tree and the brown and white cows
came slowly up from the pond and stood near her.
Some butted her gently and they licked her bare arms
with their great coarse drooling tongues. Their eyes, wet as
shining water, regarded her. They came closer and began to
press their warm flanks against her, and as they pressed
an almost unendurable joy came over her and
lifted her like a warm wind and she could fly.
She flew over the tree and she flew over the field and
she flew with the cows.
When the woman woke, she rose and went to the mirror.
She looked a long time at her living self.
Then she went down to the kitchen which the sun had made all
yellow, and she made tea. She drank it at the table, slowly,
all the while touching her arms where the cows had licked.
On Religion: Dan Brown Has It Wrong
Like some (or perhaps even many) of you, I’m reading Dan Brown’s new novel, The Lost Symbol. It’s a great read, no doubt about it. But early on, there’s this one part that really bugs me. It’s on page 30, where one of Professor Langdon’s Harvard undergraduates wonders whether Masonry is a religion. “Give it the litmus test,” says Langdon. “What are the three prerequisites for an ideology to be considered a religion?” An alert student answers, “ABC. Assure, Believe, Convert.” “Correct,” Langdon replies. “Religions assure salvation; religions believe in a precise theology; and religions convert nonbelievers.”
This is the part that bugs me. A bajillion people are going to read Dan Brown’s thriller, and most of them will swallow his definition of religion—which is a bad one—without blinking an eye. According to his definition, liberal Christianity is not a religion. Neither is Judaism, Taoism, or Unitarian Universalism. None follow the ABC formula.
But if ABC doesn’t describe Unitarian Universalism, what does?
For me, the better formula is EMC. Unitarian Universalism envisions a transformed world; Unitarian Universalism maps the way there; and Unitarian Universalism challenges people to be inner-directed and authentic in their spirituality. EMC.
Take E. Our religion envisions a future in which people respect the interdependent web of all existence as well as the inherent worth and dignity of every person that dwells within it. Our religion envisions the spread of faith communities which support a free and responsible search for truth and meaning in an empowering context of mutual acceptance and encouragement. Our religion envisions world community, grounded in democracy, in which there is peace, liberty, and justice for all. All of this comprises the transformed world which Unitarian Universalism envisions.
Note how I have simply reframed the Seven Principles here. The “E” part of my EMC formula touches on things we are already familiar with. And so does the “M” part. “M” maps out the way forward by naming specific spiritual disciplines which, if practiced regularly, will enable us to help make Unitarian Universalism’s inspired, future oriented-vision come true. These spiritual disciplines include worship, study, service, generosity, life in covenant-centered community, and inner-development practices like prayer or meditation. Each of these is an integral part of the map.
E, M, and, finally, C. “C” stands for “challenge”: Unitarian Universalism does not so much convert as challenge. It challenges people to face up to the fact that our transformed vision of the world is not guaranteed; we must work hard to make it so. It challenges people to be willing to grow and change over time, even if it takes us into places of chaos and messiness and grief. It challenges us to trust life and have faith that it is worth living, even in the worst of times. It challenges us to reject parroting other people’s religious ideas and to be authentic and inner-directed in what we believe and value. It challenges us to connect with the Divine Spark that is within each and all and, out of this experience of wonder and awe, to heal our world and make it whole.
This is the formula that describes our faith. Not ABC, but EMC. And do you see how closely it resembles Einstein’s famous equation: E=MC2? I think there’s an intriguing suggestion here. In our Unitarian Universalist way of religion, there is power. Dan Brown may not know it. Let’s be sure we do.
Planting Seeds of Soul: The Seed of Self-Knowledge
How many of you remember the 1984 movie hit The Karate Kid? It’s a story about a high-schooler named Daniel who’s moved from New Jersey to California and finds himself the target of a group of bullies—karate students from the Cobra Kai Dojo, taught by a teacher who is himself a bully, John Kreese, who says over and over, “Mercy is for the weak. An enemy deserves no mercy.” They’ve decided that Daniel is their enemy, and he’s in trouble.
Enter Mr. Miyagi. Daniel initially knows him as the eccentric maintenance man at the apartment complex he and his mom are living in, but as the bullying at school gets worse, Daniel learns that there’s more to him than meets the eye. He’s a karate expert in his own right. Learned it from his Dad, but not as a way of spreading hurt in the world. Karate is a discipline of the spirit—a way of beauty and strength. “Fighting always last answer to problem,” he tells Daniel. The crucial issue is attitude—that’s what’s wrong with the bullies from school. He says, “No such thing as bad student, only bad teacher.”
Soon after that, Mr. Miyagi goes with Daniel to the Cobra Kai Dojo—goes right into the lion’s den, this fragile looking elderly man who is, like, two feet shorter than John Kreese. John Kreese just towers over him, exudes brutality. But Mr. Miyagi calmly stands his ground. Let’s solve things at the karate tournament coming up. Allow Daniel to train for it. No more bullying. Resolve things then.
It’s the kind of movie that makes you get up and cheer (even if the soundtrack is soooo 1980s). Daniel trains night and day with Mr. Miyagi, to hone his karate skills. He also learns more about his mysterious mentor—the fact that he was a World War II hero, the fact that his wife died in childbirth while she was at a Japanese internment camp. This is a man with courage and integrity. And in the end, at the karate tournament, when Daniel wins, he wins with courage and integrity. That’s what karate is really all about.
Now, to move us closer to our focus for today, consider how Mr. Miyagi trained Daniel in karate. If you know the movie, a phrase should spring instantly to mind: “wax on, wax off.” He says to Daniel, “I promise teach karate. That’s my part. You promise learn. I say, you do, no questions. That’s your part. Deal?” And of course, Daniel is all ready to go. “It’s a deal,” he says enthusiastically, with visions of advanced karate moves dancing in his head. So you can understand how confused he is when Mr. Miyagi then says, “First wash all the cars, then wax. Wax on right hand. Wax off left hand. Breathe in through nose, out through mouth. Don’t forget to breathe. Very important. Wax on, wax off. Wax on, wax off.” And then he leaves Daniel to the task. Daniel has just promised Mr. Miyagi to do what he says, no questions, so he jumps on it. Wax on, wax off. But after several more days of oddball tasks like this—sand the floor, paint the house, paint the fence—Daniel has had enough. How is any of this relevant to learning karate? How is any of this going to keep him alive when he fights those Cobra Kai bullies at the upcoming karate tournament? He thinks Mr. Miyagi is just using him. Says, “Four days I’ve been busting my butt, I haven’t learned a thing.”
But Daniel has. He just doesn’t know it yet. Mr. Miyagi has been planting seeds all along, seeds of karate skills, and now he’s going to open Daniel’s eyes. “Not everything is as it seems,” he says, and then he asks him to make the motions of “wax on, wax off.” Daniel proceeds to do exactly that—makes perfect half circles in the air. Then Mr. Miyagi does something completely unexpected: he throws a chest punch at him, and before Daniel even realizes what is happening, one of his circling hands has intercepted the punch and deflected it effortlessly. All along, without his conscious knowledge, his body has been absorbing the karate lessons perfectly. Sand the floor, paint the house, paint the fence have trained him in moves that effortlessly deflect all kinds of punches and kicks. Finally Daniel understands. He’s well on his way.
Not everything is as it seems. And this opens the way to our topic today: planting seeds of soul. How the seeds may not seem like much, at first glance, but if they are allowed to grow, the results are amazing.
As in Daniel’s situation, there’s urgency around this. We face bullies, too, which cause harm and hurt. Educator and spiritual activist Parker Palmer says it well, in his classic book, Let Your Life Speak. He says, “We arrive in this world with birthright gifts—then we spend the first half of our lives abandoning them or letting others disabuse us of them. As young people, we are surrounded by expectations that may have little to do with who we really are, expectations held by people who are not trying to discern our selfhood but fit us into slots.” Parker Palmer goes on to say, “In families, in schools, workplaces, and religious communities, we are trained away from true self towards images of acceptability; under social pressures like racism or sexism [or homophobia] our original shape is deformed beyond recognition; and we ourselves, driven by fear, too often betray true self in order to gain the approval of others.” That’s Parker Palmer. Cobra Kai bullies of one form or another surround us. Our true selves, like Daniel in the movie, are fighting for their lives. And if we lose touch with them—if we give them up in exchange for living other people’s values—then life turns desperate. We turn brittle and bitter. We burn out. “Only when I give something that does not grow within me” says Parker Palmer, “do I deplete myself and harm the other as well, for only harm can come from a gift that is forced, inorganic, unreal.”
The situation is urgent. “The reason the earth lies shattered and in pieces is because man is disunited from himself.” Emerson said that. We must remember our true selves, re-establish the relationship, root ourselves down in the soil of our souls. Continually work at this, in the face of bullying forces that continually conspire to make us forget, to break the relationship, to pull up roots.
Enter Mr. Miyagi—or, actually, a book that came into my life this past summer, by meditation teacher Warren Lee Cohen called Raising the Soul: Practical Exercises for Personal Development. I was and am favorably struck by his approach, for four reasons. First, his use of the word “soul” fits in with our Unitarian Universalist way, in that what he has to say about it—what the exercises try to accomplish—puts the question of whether souls in a metaphysical sense exist to the side. Some of us believe, others do not, but what all of us can believe is that soulfuless as a quality of living is a far better thing than soullessness. That’s the central focus here: self-awareness, balance, perspective, non-anxiousness, also compassion—being able to deal with the inner critic and the inner chatterer with greater effectiveness. Doing justice to the inner self so we can do justice to the outer world. Soulfulness.
I like Warren Lee Cohen’s emphasis here, as well as the emphasis on safety, complementarity, and comprehensiveness. The series of seven exercises he teaches have been practiced by many people from all walks of life for many years, and they are completely safe, he says, “if performed as described. Their apparent simplicity does not detract from the power of their enduring effect when practiced steadily. They work gently over a long period of time, and will promote lasting change.” But what if you are already engaged in another contemplative or meditative practice—as quite a few of us here are? I’m thinking in particular of our wonderful Buddhist meditation group. The answer? Great—“the seven exercises are an excellent complement to any path of inner learning, and will help keep you grounded and in balance.”
As for the issue of comprehensiveness. This is the part I like best of all. As a Unitarian Universalist, I don’t want to check any aspect of myself at the door, as the price of coming in. I want to bring in my feelings, I want to bring in my will, and I want to bring in my thinking. Feeling, willing, and thinking all have to be a part of my spiritual way, for it to be right for me. Happily, the seven soul exercises that Warren Lee Cohen teaches reflect this. Just listen to their names:
Review of the Day
Clear Thinking
Intention in Action
Balance in Feeling
Positive World View
Open Mind
and
Gratitude
Especially fascinating to me is the order in which they are given. The first, Review of the Day, which is the one we will learn today, lays the foundation, and the rest follow in an intentional sequence. “Try not to skip an exercise or stay focused on any one for too long,” says Warren Lee Cohen, “as this will detract from their harmonizing, mutually enhancing effect.” It is a question of balance. Genuine soulfulness requires emotional intelligence as much as intellectual intelligence. And even if you have both, if willpower is weak, then the result is frustration. We need all three to be strong.
And now, like Mr. Miyagi said to Daniel, I say to those of you who are interested, and want to practice these soul-raising exercises over the course of this year, “I promise teach karate. That’s my part. You promise learn. I say, you do, no questions. That’s your part. Deal?”
Actually, you can ask questions. That’s OK. Another difference between what we’re doing now and the movie is that I’m going to be a fellow learner. We’re going to be planting seeds of soul together, one seed each month, for the next seven months.
And so: the first exercise: Review of the Day. Here it is, in all its “wax on, wax off” glory:
1. Create a space of 5 to 20 minutes for this exercise at the end of your day. Make it a part of your daily practice. Get into a new rhythm—try your best.
2. Situate yourself in a way that minimizes distractions and discomfort. Some people choose to walk as they do this; others stand; still others sit in a chair, or on the floor, or in bed. Find a place and a posture that suits you.
3. Relax your body—calm your mind. Think of an athlete stretching before practice or a musician tuning an instrument before playing. Warm up.
4. Begin the rewind. Starting with where you are, picture yourself going through your day backwards, as if you were witnessing things from outside, as an onlooker. Capture as many sights, sounds, smells, tastes, conversations, as you can. See how far you can get. Can you get to your first waking thoughts? Can you even get beyond this, to your dreams before you woke up? Allow knowledge of yourself to unfold.
Three pointers here, before we go on to the next and last step.
First one: What if your mind veers off on a tangent, as is so easy to do? Try to follow your thoughts back to where you left off. Track them down, thought by thought, image by image. Then continue where you left off. Of course, since we such are complicated creatures, when you find yourself veering off, in the moment you realize it, the inner critic might decide to show up and start berating you. I’ll have a lot more to say about the inner critic this year—doing these seven exercises is going to give us lots of practice in dealing with our inner gremlin, trust me. For now, just don’t allow yourself to get sucked in by the drama. Try to be patient and forgiving of your limitations. Respond to the inner critic gently. “Thank you for sharing your perspective, but now I will carry on with what I was doing.” Something like that. A good way of dealing with outer critics as well.
Second pointer: “Some people complete this exercise easily in 5-10 minutes. Others struggle to do even part of their day’s review in half an hour, or fall asleep right in the middle of things. What is most important, however, is not that this exercise is done perfectly, but that you have put effort into it, and that over time you are improving. It is the effort, the active work of soul, that fosters development. The point is to learn how to live a more meaningful life, not to be perfect, so be kind to yourself. Forgive. This is essential in any undertaking and even more important when the challenge is to develop your soul.”
And now the third pointer: “If it is very difficult for you to review your whole day, then I suggest you try to review just a part of your day, say from lunch back to breakfast, or from what happened when you returned from work or school. Again, perfection is not the point. What is the point is establishing a regular rhythm to your inner work—trying to do it every day and better still every day at the same time. Getting into a regular rhythm is key. Rhythm will strengthen your practice and will, in time, bring the best results.”
As for the final step of the exercise:
5. Finish up in a way that feels good for you. I say this out of consideration for the kind of impact the Review of the Day exercise can have. It can help put the day to rest; give it a sense of completion; enable a sounder sleep—some people even testify that it helps ease insomnia. Above all, the Review can help us see our lives with greater perspective. While we’re living our day forward, what happens may at the time seem insignificant or completely ordinary; yet looked at again, it can shine in a whole new light, for now it is finding a place in the context of the whole day. Positive patterns emerging and becoming known. True self emerging. We may also get clearer about the things in our day that drain our energy and leave us depleted—enabling us to be in a better position the next day and the next for making better choices. In light of all this, you may choose to end the Review of the Day with an entry in your journal, to write about the insights that arise, goals for the future. Another way of ending might be to share your reflections with a friend or a spouse—if you both do this, it can lead to strengthening your relationship, and that’s great. Yet a third way of ending can simply be to say thank you—thanks to the universe, thanks to God, or just plain thanks—for the gifts of the day, or simply the opportunity to become more aware of them.
It’s all about planting seeds of soul. One seed each and every month. Earlier, Parker Palmer talked about how we can be trained away from our true selves by various bullying forces: in families, in schools, in workplaces … and then he adds to the list religious communities. (Did you notice that? I did.) It’s true. We can lose our souls even in the very places that are supposed to help us find them. But not here. Here we are growing Unitarian Universalist souls. We’re going to raise the soul here in our midst, work hard to do that. And if you take up my challenge to join me in practicing the seven exercises, remember, if and when you find yourself wondering what they have to do with justice in the larger world and justice in our souls, remember Mr. Miyagi, and Daniel, and wax on, wax off. Sand the floor, paint the house, paint the fence. Not everything is as it seems. True self will rise.
Only That Day Dawns to Which We Are Awake
“From the east comes the sun, bringing a new and unspoiled day.” So begins our responsive reading from a moment ago, by Universalist minister Clinton Lee Scott. The sun, which “has already circled the earth and looked upon distant lands and far-away peoples. It has passed over mountain ranges; it has shone upon laborers; it has beheld proud cities; it has been witness to both good and evil; it has seen.”
And what has it seen, recently?
It has seen a world in transformation because of technological innovations of the past 20 years, like the Internet, digital media, and wireless networks. Hyperconnectivity is now a way of life: the constant chatter of the Net, planetary monkey mind, videos going viral. Bad and good mixed together: smallest personal actions tracked by giant marketing and homeland security databases; but then you have Twitter posts crying foul during the recent Iranian elections, escaping all censoring by an oppressive government, gathering and galvanizing protesters for action.
The sun has seen. This too: following on the heels of rampant greed and speculation, a worldwide recession, the worst in recent memory, a domino effect of one country after another finding itself struggling with factory closures, job losses, credit crunches, Wall Street impacting and being impacted by markets thousands of miles away. Here in Atlanta, even as the larger economy improves, budgets are still tight at home, almost 10% unemployment on our streets.
The sun has seen. This as well: an arguably illegal war in Iraq, more than six years old, run poorly, with unacceptable human and financial costs, sparking more thirst for terror rather than dampening it. Though now, with the end of this war in sight, the focus shifts to the even older war in Afghanistan and its uncertain prospects. Our President juggling way too many balls right now, and this is a big one.
The sun has seen. So much to be seen. The justice principle of affordable health care for all, alive in most economically advanced countries in the world, struggling to live here in America, facing the meat-grinder of politics. Scare tactics and misinformation all over the place. Charges of “death panels.” Charges of socialism coming out of the mouths of town hall protesters, or worse. “Keep your government hands off my Medicare,” yells the person who doesn’t seem to realize that Medicare is a government program—a government-run, taxpayer-funded, single-payer health insurance program. Anger and despair all over. Can’t help but wonder: is politics broken? Affordable health care for all was first proposed by Theodore Roosevelt in 1912—and it’s still not a done deal.
All this, the sun has seen. All of it and more. Yet, says Clinton Lee Scott, it is not overwhelmed. “Now, unsullied from its tireless journey, it comes to us, messenger of the morning, harbinger of a new day.” And really, the profound and essential question facing us is: can we join the sun in its new morning? Can we rise with it, receive its message of a new dawn? Do we believe that there can be a new morning for us in this world, despite all? Do we believe there can be a new morning in America?
“Only that day dawns to which we are awake.” This is a line from Henry David Thoreau. Unless the sleeper wakes up, there can be no morning, just perpetual midnight. Unless the sleeper awakens to the abundant truths and powers of the soul. Truths and powers each and every one of us is born with, establishing our freedom to respond to the trials of life with courage and creativity and generosity. Enabling us to be free in our minds and hearts even if we find ourselves surrounded with unfreedom on all sides. Empowering us to be heroes in an unheroic age. There is a dawning day that we can experience here and now—we can join the sun in its new morning—but only if we awaken to it. Only if the sleeper wakes up.
This is Transcendentalism. This is the vision that inspired our 19th century spiritual ancestors like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Peabody, Bronson Alcott, James Freeman Clarke, Theodore Parker, and more. The sun that rises every morning symbolizing the sun within. If we can wake up to that, our lives will be transformed. And so will the world. Personal growth and social justice just two sides of the same coin of spirituality. This is Transcendentalism.
It’s a message that is as vital now as it ever was. Transcendentalism is uniquely Unitarian Universalist—it came from our people and our tradition—and we need to be giving this treasure to ourselves and to the larger world. We need to be good stewards of this. Lots of ways of breaking through with generosity, and this is a crucial one. That’s why we’re going to be focusing on Henry David Thoreau’s Walden during this year’s First Sunday services. Live with this classic of Transcendentalist spirituality all year long. Let it enter into us and change us. See where it takes us. Allow ourselves to be surprised.
So we begin. A good start is to consider what the sun in the days of the original Transcendentalists saw, as it shone specifically upon the place and time in which they lived: New England in the 1830s and 1840s—Boston and the surrounding area, especially Concord. What did the sun see?
For one thing, radical change. Before 1830, everything had been primarily local, from one’s sense of identity to working conditions and the manufacture of goods. It took time for messages to go from point A to point B. It took time to get anywhere. But this all came to an end. The invention of the telegraph allowed for news to cross far distances instantly. Then there was the railroad, newly built tracks crisscrossing the land, bringing with it a new sense of national identity. Also new economic opportunity, allowing sons and daughters to leave home to find wage-earning jobs in the cities or in the also new textile mills of New England. Leading to the transient population in cities rising at an alarming rate. Unregulated working conditions becoming worse and worse, even as more and more money was being made. Old ways lost, one by one. Old traditions and comforts and securities. Sons and daughters no longer automatically doing what their parents had done before them, and their parents before them. Radical change in every sphere of life. Bad and good consequences all mixed together.
This is what the sun saw in its journey in the 1830s and 1840s. Also this: economic meltdown. Robert Sullivan, author of the recent book The Thoreau You Don’t Know, says that “To imagine Thoreau and his writing without considering the economy is a little like thinking about The Grapes of Wrath without considering the Great Depression.” Prior to 1837, the stock market had been roaring with speculation; government had expanded the money supply, had expanded credit and loans. But the bubble popped. Said a Unitarian minister at the time, “We were in the midst of peace, apparent prosperity, and progress when, after extensive individual failures, the astounding truth burst upon us like a thunderbolt … that we were a nation of bankrupts, and a bankrupt nation.” Economics, as you can imagine, was on everyone’s mind. Just remember this when you start reading Walden for November’s sermon: the first chapter—the longest of them all—is entitled, “Economy.”
See where I’m going here? The Transcendentalists lived in a time that echoes our time with almost eerie precision. A world in transformation, economic meltdown, and also this: an illegal war. Influential writers and politicians in the 1840s believed in what they called America’s “manifest destiny,” which was (quote) “to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.” They were hungry for more land—land that could expand slavery in the South, mind you—and it just so happened that Mexico was struggling to maintain control of one of its territories, called Texas. Exactly the kind of situation people believing in manifest destiny wanted to take advantage of. And they did. On May 11, 1846, President James K. Polk claimed that Mexican forces had attacked American troops in United States territory, and this meant war. However, it was not true; a certain young and lanky politician from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln objected by saying, “Show me the spot!” Another politician from Georgia, Robert Toombs, cried out, “This war is nondescript…. We charge the President with usurping the war-making power… with seizing a country [namely, Texas]… which had been for centuries, and was then in the possession of the Mexicans…. Let us put a check upon this lust of dominion.” That’s what Robert Toombs said. The war was illegal, a shameless land grab.
And underlying it all was the travesty of slavery. The strangest bedfellow to the moral vision of nothing less than the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal: that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Yet what the sun saw in the time of the Transcendentalists was the very country we declared independence from—England—abolishing slavery in all her colonies in 1834. England, living out our expressed moral vision, while America was fighting an illegal war in order to expand slavery. America, hypocritical, not at the forefront of social change, but internally conflicted, confused, falling behind.
The times were troubling and overwhelming. Radical change, economic meltdown, illegal war, inability to live out the American moral vision of justice for all. And here is what the Transcendentalists thought: all were symptoms of spiritual and moral sleepwalking or, at the very least, not effectively solved when people are in the sleepwalking state. Albert Einstein spoke like a true Transcendentalist when he said, “Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.” Absolutely. “Only that day dawns to which we are awake.”
Listen to a passage from the founding document of Transcendentalism, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature, published in 1836: “[A man—and by this he means everyone] works in the world with his understanding alone. He lives in it, and masters it by penny wisdom; and he that works most in it, is but a half-man, and whilst his arms are strong and his digestion good, his mind is imbruted, and he is a selfish savage. His relation to nature, his power over it, is through the understanding; as by manure; the economic use of fire, wind, water, and the mariner’s needle; steam, coal, chemical agriculture; the repairs of the human body by the dentist and the surgeon. This is such a resumption of power, as if a banished king should buy his territories inch by inch, instead of vaulting at once into his throne.” In other words, people can’t become fully human if they don’t expand their minds. If the only thing that’s real for you is surfaces; if the only way you know how to relate to the world is as something to be materially manipulated and used, sold, bought, and traded, then there will never be an end to economic meltdowns, illegal wars, and hypocritical travesties of justice—and forget about weathering the storms of radical change. You—a birthright king—will remain banished. The kingdom is rightfully yours, yet, absurdly, you think you must buy it back inch by inch. Stay locked within what Emerson calls “penny wisdom,” and that will be your fate.
And it is tragic, because so much more is possible. Besides “penny wisdom,” there is another capacity of mind: an intuitive, holistic capacity—very different. Turn it on, and at once, we vault to the throne that is our birthright. The world in our eyes becomes transformed into a place of beauty and possibility; subtle patterns of meaning step forward and we are amazed; we discover an inner freedom and peace that no external adversity can shake; we realize the difference between the ways and laws of our society and the higher law of conscience. “Crossing a bare common,” says Emerson, “in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods, too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perennial youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel nothing can befall me in life,– no disgrace, no calamity … which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed in 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.” That is what Emerson says. Emerson has vaulted straight to his throne, and we can as well. But only if we open up to the world in a way that’s very different from “penny wisdom.” Only if we expand our minds.
In other words: “self-culture.” That’s the phase that Transcendentalists used to describe the work of waking up, and becoming fully human. Thoreau himself started on this work soon after he checked Nature out of the library at Harvard College in April of 1837, the year he graduated. Emerson’s message was received. Thoreau himself would put things like this: “Our limbs indeed have room enough but it is our souls that rust in a corner. Let us migrate interiorly without intermission, and pitch our tent each day nearer the western horizon.”
But how exactly do we do that—“migrate interiorly”? Given what we have already heard from Emerson—given what we already know about Thoreau—it should come as no surprise that one main answer is to submerge ourselves in nature. Stop dissecting it and start listening. Allow it to reveal to us the depths of our own souls. The Transcendentalists believed that the interdependent web of all existence is not merely a fine-tuned fitting-together of external processes and parts; nature literally has soul, and this soul speaks to the soul of humanity. This is exactly why Thoreau could say, “I feel that I draw nearest to understanding the great secret of my life in my closest intercourse with nature.” Nature is externalized mind; and mind internalized nature. Here is the truest Bible; written ones can only take a person so far. The fullest revelation of human nature is to be found in … nature.
Other self-culture practices included small group conversations, in which people could share and integrate their discoveries in nature—put the pieces together, see what was implied about their sense of self and identity, their relationships, and larger social conditions. Disciplined conversation, journal writing, walking, leisure that allows the soul to speak, and lots and lots of reading. You’ll never meet a bunch of mystics who read so much. Then there were the social experiments in enlightened living. Brook Farm comes to mind: a cooperative community consisting of teachers, students, and workers engaged in the labor of farming together with the labor of self-culture. Then there was Thoreau’s own social experiment of one: his time at Walden, lasting two years and two months.
“We must live in the present,” said Thoreau, “launch ourselves on every wave, find our eternity in each moment.” “We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake.” The call is to enlightened individualism. But we do the Transcendentalists a severe injustice if we mistake all this as selfishness—as an every-man-for-himself mentality—as either withdrawal from community to live in isolation, or puffing oneself up and feeling entitled to impose one’s ideas (or should I say eccentricities) upon others. Our congregations have directly suffered from such misunderstandings, as when people think that they can be perfectly fine Unitarian Universalists all by themselves, or when they are so impressed by their own brilliance that they forget to listen when others have something to say—or they simply forget to be decent. But Transcendentalist self-culture, at its best, is about self-rule and transformative human relationships; it’s about becoming free in your heart and spirit so you can help spread freedom in the larger world. Walden Pond was just on the edge of Concord, after all; just a stone’s throw away. And Thoreau went there not to repudiate society once and for all but to learn how to be in society in healthier ways.
The times were challenging, then as now. From time immemorial, the sun has circled the earth, looked upon distant lands, passed over mountain ranges, shone over laborers, beheld proud cities, witnessed both good and evil. Now, unsullied from its tireless journey, it comes to us, messenger of the morning. Let’s join it in its rise, help create a new morning in this world. Continue as never before the work of self-culture in our little corner of the universe. Learn how to transcend “penny wisdom” so we can be healed and made whole. Transcendentalism is our home-grown Unitarian Universalist spirituality that shows us how.
The Cathedral of the World
“The world has need of your theology,” said prominent Harvard theologian Diana Eck last year to one of our sister congregations in New York City. “In a world divided by race, and by religion and ideology, the very presence of a church like yours—committed to the oneness of God, the love of God, the love of neighbor, and service to humanity—is a beacon. Be bold in proclaiming it!” That’s what Diana Eck said.
But before boldness of proclamation, there must be a boldness of inner vision, of imagination. So this morning, I invite you to imagine boldly, along with me, this faith tradition, this religious movement, that the world needs. Imagine with me an image or series of images that captures our story, expresses it, telegraphs who we are and what we stand for.
For me, the boldness begins with a feeling of spaciousness, of size. I see in my mind’s eye blue sky, a bright sun, and a BIG building. Not a superdome or megamall—the values those kinds of architecture imply don’t fit. What comes to mind are the great structures of our religious past—Angkor Wat, the vast ancient Hindu temple complex in Cambodia; or Islam’s Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem; or Chartres Cathedral in Paris. Architecture that serves to embody spiritual aspiration in stone and wood and glass. Spaciousness and size…..
And at this point I find myself particularly taken with the image of cathedral, so I’m going to follow up with it, trust my imagination to take me where I need to go. Unitarian Universalism is like a great massive cathedral—a cathedral of the world.
But now my inner imaginative eye—like a movie camera—swoops down and gives me a close up of the foundation of it all. I see, at the base of the cathedral, in the ground, twin foundation stones, ancient, upon which all the rest is built. Twin foundation stones: one representing Unitarianism, and the other representing Universalism.
The Unitarian stone has a date carved into it: 325AD. It represents an idea that is a lot older, but 325 AD is when it gained a definite kind of historical notoriety. The idea says that Jesus is not equal to God—Jesus is not God—God is one. Classical Unitarianism. And in 325AD, it was formally declared heretical. One of the foundation stones of the entire cathedral of the world edifice embodies … heresy.
And so does the other. Carved into it is the date 544AD, when the Universalist idea was declared heretical: the idea that God will gather up all beings into himself; no one shall be lost in hell for all time. Believe that, said the orthodox of the time, and your soul is eternally condemned.
Now pause here for a moment. This is our Unitarian Universalist cathedral of the world we are talking about, and look at how it begins: in heresy. And already we know the risks, at least theologically: our souls condemned, so say the orthodox. But there are political risks as well, since theology and politics unarguably reflect and form each other (even where there is separation of church and state). 1500 years ago, for example, to stake your claim on Unitarianism was, in essence, to reject the absolute God-ordained lordship of the emperor. Not a convenient thing to do back then when the emperor claimed his rule WAS God-ordained. In order to solidify this, in fact, he gathered up all the most important religious leaders of his day by sheer military might and charged them with defining the articles of proper Christian belief—doing this once and for all. But the religious leaders ended up dickering and dithering and multiplying distinctions and tiny differences—clarity was not happening—so the emperor essentially had to threaten them by the sword to get their act together and vote like he wanted them to: against Unitarianism and for Trinitarianism. History calls this the Council of Nicea.
Being a heretic is neither convenient nor safe. But our cathedral of the world is not built on foundations of convenience. Heresy in its most positive sense means to choose. It means to think and act on the basis of one’s personal integrity, no matter what. It is courage. That’s what our twin foundation stones say about us, who we are as a people of faith. We must never forget this. Our faith was never meant to be easy.
But now it is time to enter into the cathedral. We pass the foundation stones as we walk through massive double-doors and into a vast space. We lift up our eyes to see amazing stained glass, through which light streams and illuminates. Can you see it, in your mind’s eye?
The first piece of stained glass our eyes rest on portrays Jesus. It reminds us that Unitarianism and Universalism are ultimately responses to experiences people had of the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Once he said, “I have come that you might have life, and have it in abundance,” and this is the gospel that launched us as well as so many other communities of faith, though through the long years there has been a branching effect, differences and distinctions multiplied in ways that no emperor could prevent for long, until today, one group’s definition of Christianity might be the exact opposite of another’s. As Unitarian Universalists, sometimes we grow anxious at our seeming inability to define ourselves in a once-and-for-all sort of way. But it is good to be reminded by the example of Christianity that the task of definition is hard all-around. There is no other side of the fence where the grass is greener. Even the most dogmatic, hard-line faiths have to work hard to keep their people straight.
But that’s another sermon. For now, we are gazing on and appreciating the great teacher and prophet, Jesus. Yet this is the cathedral or the world, and the wisdom we have to offer does not stop with Christianity. Today we are a more-than-Christian, post-Christian faith. Look just to the left, and you will see light streaming through a stained glass window that portrays the Buddha—perhaps that part of his life when he experiences illumination sitting at the base of a bo tree. Light shining through this, and through so many other stained glass windows. Moses with his Ten Commandments; Lao Tzu walking in remote misty mountains; Gandhi at his spinning wheel; Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. preaching “I have a dream.” Light shining and streaming through. We look up, and what we see is breathtaking. One light, many windows. Windows of the world’s great religions. Windows of prophetic women and men. Windows of science. Windows of humanism. Windows of earth-based spirituality. Windows of mysticism. Many windows, but one shining, streaming light of truth and meaning….
We have come a long way since the earliest Jesus communities of first century Palestine, or our moments of heresy in the fourth and sixth centuries. We’ve come a long way even since the 19th century, when American Unitarianism and American Universalism were Bible-centered and exclusively Christian.
And while there are many causes I could cite for this—for our expansion into a pluralistic faith—I will ask you simply to gaze upon yet another stained glass window in our cathedral of the world. There it is: it portrays the great Unitarian preacher and prophet of Transcendentalism: Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Live after the infinite Law that is in you,” he once said, “and in company with the infinite Beauty which heaven and earth reflect to you in all lovely forms.” Revelation, in other words, can’t possibly be contained just within the Hebrew or Christian Bible. The wellspring is fundamentally within each of our souls; revelation bubbles up out of the spark of the Divine in our depths. Add to this the revelation of nature, as well as the revelation embodied by the Bibles of many times and lands, such as Hinduism’s Bhagavad Gita. The one light of truth is abundant; no single stained-glass window may ever contain it or control it. One light but many, many windows.
So our job, says Emerson, is to live in the light. Let the light that comes to us through so many windows of truth and wisdom go deep and awaken the sleeping source of light within. Let sleeping heretics awaken, to choose with integrity and with courage what they shall believe about God and the afterlife and ethics and so many other things. Let sleeping heretics awaken and know their hidden powers for healing and action and compassion. Said Emerson in 1836, “Our age is retrospective. It builds on the sepulchers of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? […] There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.” In our cathedral of the world, there are already many stained glass windows, yet larger still is the space awaiting what is new. Your window, my window. Revelation is not ended. Revelation is not sealed. The journey never ends.
Yet at this point I need to acknowledge something. So far, we have seen that today’s Unitarian Universalism invites us on a great adventure of light. One light, many windows. Yet that is not all there is to our lives. And that’s not all there is in our cathedral of the world. For in our cathedral, there are plenty of shadows as well.
To understand what I mean, we need to learn a little more about Emerson’s life. Emerson’s father was a traditional minister who never blessed him. His first wife Ellen, who believed in him, who was his rock, died young … and death repeatedly struck his brothers and his own children. The man who wrote, “Hitch your wagon to a star” and “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” also wrote, “after thirty, a man wakes up sad every morning.” And then from his student days at Harvard: right in the middle of an essay he was writing about God, struggling with what those three little letters strung together refer to—his eyes failed him and he was able to see no light at all. Only after two surgeries and nine months of recuperation was he able to go back to wrestling with his theological studies.
If ever there was a man who loved light, it was Emerson. Yet the light never comes unmixed. Adversity is a part and parcel of the human condition. Shadow parts in ourselves and in our relationships lead to self-destructiveness and addictions and bad habits of every kind. Shadow parts in society and the larger world lead to structural poverty and prejudice and war. The light never comes unmixed.
Life is a great mystery. Unitarian Universalist minister Forrest Church puts it this way: “By the time we die, we will barely have gotten our minds wet. The wisest of us all will have but the faintest notion of what life was all about.” He goes on to say: “This counsels humility, but also oneness. … My favorite etymology speaks eloquently to this very point. Human, humane, humanitarian, humor, humility, humus.”
For me, what all of this leads to is my sense of the Unitarian Universalist religious journey as NOT a quest for certainty—NOT a quest for perfection in the here and now—but a quest for greater trust in the meaningfulness and worth of life, no matter where it leads. I need the abundance of light that streams and shines through the many windows of our cathedral of the world to encourage me, to strengthen me. I need it to waken the sleeping light within, as well, so that the abundance within me can be released. So that I can be a messenger of hope and humor to others, a messenger of compassion and peace. We live in a world that is so often unfair, and joy is weirdly and jarringly juxtaposed with every kind of woe. Randomness and senselessness and sorrow strike. Life can place so many limits on us. But there are no limits that can be placed on our human capacity to respond with courage and grace and forgiveness. There are no limits to this. Our greatest prophets and saints prove the point. Jesus. The Buddha. No limits to the abundance of the human heart to be generous in times of anxiety and fear. No limits to clarity or compassion. None.
Our cathedral of the world is all about abundance. Abundant choice, abundant light, abundant mystery, abundant capacity to respond to life with limitless love. “I have come that you might have life, and have it in abundance.”
But there is one more thing to notice, before we are done with this bold imaginative vision of who we are as a religious people—the vision we can proclaim boldly in the world. We have been looking up at the stained glass windows for a long time now, so now let’s look down at the floor. What we see is a Latin phrase: E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.
To me, this suggests how we see ourselves as a community of gathered seekers. It’s wonderfully infused by core American values which have themselves been shaped and formed by key Unitarian and Universalist leaders. The author of these words, for example: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Words from the Declaration of Independence—written by Thomas Jefferson, Unitarian. It’s why our community affirms the inherent worth and dignity of each person. Why our community affirms the spirituality of the work of social justice to defend human dignity and restore it when others threaten to take it away. It’s why our community affirms open conversation in the context of supportive community. It’s why we affirm each individual journey of faith because we know that the Creator has a creative connection with each and every person here and now. This is the floor upon which we stand—the covenant that unites us and makes us whole. We need not think alike to love alike.
Consider another distinctly American phrase that resonates with us: “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Here is the classic definition of democracy, which Abraham Lincoln famously used in his Gettysburg Address. But it’s not original with him. He got it from Theodore Parker, one of our best Unitarian preachers in the 19th century, whose services would gather literally thousands of people—he was a megachurch preacher and didn’t know it. “Of the people, by the people, for the people.” It means that through our gathered generosity of presence and service and witness and giving, we can become great. We each get a vote in this community, in some form or fashion, and to the degree that we vote, we are vital and strong. It’s good old American enterprise: You get only as much as you put in. Vote with your time and energy, because without you, this community cannot be strong. Vote with your presence. Vote with your volunteerism. Vote with your financial generosity. Don’t be fooled by all the people you see, thinking that someone else will do it so you don’t have to. Don’t think that no one will miss your single vote, since there are so many others. American democracy can’t survive such apathy, since it inevitably builds and steamrolls; and we can’t survive it here, in our Unitarian Universalist spiritual democracy. “Of the people, by the people, for the people” means everyone involved in some way, everyone informed, because everyone has a vital stake in the outcome.
The building of our cathedral of the world never ends. It needs every one of us. But it is worth it. It is bold. It symbolizes a religion which essentially says: abundance. Abundance of choice, abundance of light, abundance of mystery, abundance of humanity, abundance of involvement and enterprise in building community. The challenge for us, ultimately, is this: how shall we live in this abundance? Will we allow it to change us? Will we let it sink it, transform us from within?
Though the foundation stones are ancient, still, Unitarian Universalism itself is only a baby faith, born with the formal consolidation of Unitarianism and Universalism in the 20th century, in 1961. A new thing came to life in that year, different from anything that had ever been before. And I believe that we live in a unique moment of time, where congregations like this one can make a huge impact on the shape of our movement and its future. We need to give ourselves to the abundance of this faith and let it inspire us, create out of it. Back in 1836, Emerson asked, “Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? […] There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.” Why not? Why not, here at UUCA? Let us imagine our faith boldly, and then proclaim it boldly—this faith that the world needs.
POSTSCRIPT: I’m indebted to the Rev. Forrest Church, who is the original source of the “one light, many windows” concept, as well as the image of “the cathedral of the world.” Together with many other Unitarian Universalists around the world, I grieve his recent death and honor his leadership in our movement.
Rosh Hashanah Homily: Giving Birth To Isaac
Today is the birthday of the world!
Earlier I was scanning my facebook page, and I noticed one post which not only affirmed this but said it was also Talk Like A Pirate Day.
And so I read these responses to the original post:
Arrgghhh, maties, have a great new year!
L’shana tovaaaar!
shiver me shofars!
And now that I’ve brought it up, let’s get it out of our systems. L’shana tovaaaar—everyone, say it with me……
Today is the birthday of the world!
And while Rosh Hashanah, traditionally, recalls for us God’s creation of the universe at the beginning of time, it does so only to deepen our wonder and appreciation for the new beginning that is before us, personally and collectively. And so it was that a moment ago we said together:
In the twilight of the vanishing year,
we lift up our hearts in thanksgiving.
Our souls are stirred by the memory of joy
as the new year begins.
I’ve come to learn that another Rosh Hashanah tradition is reading the story of Sarah giving birth to Isaac. You would think that the traditional reading would be the one from Genesis, the creation story, majestic with lines like, “And God said, let there be light…” Brilliant with refrain after refrain of, “And God saw that it was good.” Yet Rosh Hashanah, even as it is the birthday of the world, puts particular and special emphasis on the birthday of the human world, the birthday of history. It affirms our Unitarian Universalist First Principle of the inherent worth and dignity of all people. Thus the traditional story that is read: the story of Sarah and her giving birth to Isaac.
The context is this: Long after the Flood and Noah, God spoke to a faithful man named Abram and said, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.”
“I will make you into a great nation
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”
Abram was supposed to have been 75 years old when God said all this to him, and God kept on saying it, in one place and then in another, throughout his and Sarai’s long journey. But despite all the assurances, Sarai—equally aged—remained infertile. Being the practical person she was, at one point she told Abram to go sleep with her maidservant, saying “perhaps I can build a family through her.” A child was born, named Ishmael, but born with him was also conflict and strife. Besides being practical, Sarah was also very human, with her own hopes and dreams, and Ishmael’s birth only sharpened her desire for a child of her own flesh until it cut like a knife. Ishmael, with her maidservant mother, eventually found themselves banished, and they would have died unless God had stepped in to preserve them.
God is stepping into people’s lives a lot in these old stories. And he does so again, years later, in the lives of Sarai and Abram. Once again, like a broken record, God repeats his promise—and to make the deal even more solid he renames them Sarah and Abraham, names we know them better by today. “This is my covenant to you,“ God intones… But this time, Abraham counters with silent laughter. As the Bible puts it: “Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, ‘Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?’” It’s just impossible. How can the birth—the birthday of a new human world—happen, when the father and mother are seemingly sterile?
Well, we know it does happen. Years of infertility—year after grinding, hopeless year—can’t stop the miracle. God makes the seemingly infertile fertile. From two aged people, Abraham and Sarah, he is able to raise up an entire nation, a great nation. And even if this particular part—the God part—is sheer symbol and metaphor, the greatness of Israel is real. The greatness of the Jewish spirit. Here and now, we celebrate it. The world’s birthday. The birth of a people and a history, against all odds. Isaac is born. He is.
One year before it happens, three visitors come near Abraham’s tent—and here’s the key part of the whole story. It is a hot day, and Abraham is moved by the sacred law of hospitality to refresh them with food and drink and rest. Somehow these three visitors turn out to be the Lord, or the Lord speaks through them—the Bible is a bit confusing on this—and this is how the conversation goes:
“Where is your wife Sarah?” they asked Abraham.
“There, in the tent,” he said.
Then the LORD said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.”
Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him. Abraham and Sarah were already old and well advanced in years, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing. So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, “After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?”
Then the LORD said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the LORD? I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarah will have a son.”
Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, “I did not laugh.”
But the LORD said, “Yes, you did laugh.”
Yeah, I know that Abraham laughed as well—but if you will recall, he did so silently, just to himself. For Sarah, on the other hand, it’s out loud, uppity, no-holds barred, blunt. Loud enough to be heard outside the tent, even though she’s inside.
Sarah the skeptic. Sarah the wonderfully human. Sarah whose very own body gives birth to Isaac and to an entire nation even if to her it seemed absolutely and utterly impossible, even if she was tired of all the promises she’d heard, yada yada yada, over all the long years.
There’s lots we could tease out of this story, as rich as it is. But the one thing I want to focus on is what can be on our minds and hearts as we face a new year and the task of beginning again the world that is our personal life, or the world of our families, or the world of our collective life as a congregation or a city or a nation. Just as for Abraham and Sara, promises are set before us. Promises that justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Promises of happiness and wellbeing in our families. Promises that we can be happy and healthy in our own lives. We have heard all the promises. Rosh Hashanah itself is one of these promises, that hope can be reborn to us in the new year! We have heard all the promises before.
But at least for me, there are times when all the promises seem repetitive and empty, and I’m feeling as sterile as sterile can be, and I don’t believe. At the thought of new birth, at the thought of beginning yet another year, all I want to do is … laugh. Just like Sarah. Be loud, uppity, no-holds barred, blunt, just like her.
There were dreams that came to naught….
and times when we refused to dream.
Some of our days were dark with grief.
Many a tear furrowed our cheeks.
We look back with sorrow, as the new year begins.
We all have different stories of this and feel it with varying levels of intensity. Last year might have been just great for some of us. But for others of us, there were challenges. Adversity. Financial difficulty. Job loss. Sickness. Others hurt us, or we hurt them. We made mistakes, and we feel horrible. Then there’s the larger world. International crises of one type or another. National crises. Politics. People putting Hitler mustaches on photos of our President—and there is more ugliness to come.
Give me a great big Sarah laugh, right now!
All of this is why the great writer Elie Wiesel once said, “The true task of life is never merely beginning—it is beginning again.” This is why Rosh Hashanah is so important. It puts us honestly in touch with our inner Sarahs—and yet it shows us that, through this very same inner Sarah, we can and we will give birth to a new world.
Yet we look ahead with hope,
giving thanks for the daily miracle of renewal,
for the promise of good to come.
Our job here and now is nothing less than to connect with our inner Sarah. All that honesty, all that spunk. Keeps us grounded. Keeps us real. But don’t stop there. We must never forget how the story ends for Sarah, and how it can end for us. Against all odds, Sarah gives birth. Clearly, we don’t have the benefit or the challenge of Abraham’s God stepping directly into our stories, visiting our tents for food and drink and rest. But for those of us who are God-believers of some sort, we know that God is an ever-present source of renewal that is always available to tap into if only we stop long enough to focus and to listen. And for all of us, God-believer or not, we are healed and made whole by the power of friendship, the energy of compassion and kindness, the grace of the world’s beauty, the wisdom of teachers around us and those who have gone before us, the gifts of religious traditions like Judaism and, of course, Unitarian Universalism. Each and all help us to take life one step at a time, one day at a time, trusting that as we step forward, we will be met with whatever we most need in that moment. We can begin again. One step, one day at a time.
Sarah, 90 years old, in her mind too old ever to give birth, does. We can face a new year and begin again, full of hope. Each of us, in the way that is proper and appropriate to our unique life situations, can give birth to Isaac. That’s the job that Rosh Hashanah gives us. Give birth to Isaac.
You know what Isaac the name actually means? Laughter. He will laugh.
With laughter, we enter into the new year.
L’shana tovah!
Religion and Ethics Newsweekly
- Religious Reaction to Obama’s Afghanistan War Plan Mixed December 4, 2009
- Stem Cells Approved for Government Funded Research; Obama Establishes New Bioethics Commission December 4, 2009
- Gay Marriage Split Decisions in DC and NY; MA Episcopal Clergy May Officiate at Same-Sex Weddings December 4, 2009
- Islamic Militants Kill Dozens at Pakistan Mosque December 4, 2009
- On Our Calendar December 4, 2009
