Sermons: Rev. Darcey Laine

Who Do You Say That I Am?

2012-01-23T11:00:00.000-08:00

These reflections bookended a series of readings about the nature of the divine presented by participants in our Adult Religious Education Class.

Reflection part 1:
For as far back as anyone can remember, talking about God has been a problem. That one word is so powerful and so loaded. Richard Dawkins, a contemporary humanist and Atheist writes: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” [Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion ]

Many of us are here in this UU church today because at one point or another we have heard stories about God that we just could not believe in, like the god of Genesis who destroys all the beings of the world in a flood except those saved on an Ark because “the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth.” When I heard stories like this in Sunday school I knew that I could not believe in such a God.

The very first Universalists risked being ostracized by friends and family, losing their jobs, and facing persecution because they could not believe in a God who would damn to hell most of those people he had created and save only an elect few.

I arrived at seminary with just such images of God in my mind. Starr King is part of an interfaith Theological Union, and I didn’t really appreciate until my first semester the opportunities we would have to take classes at the other seminaries -- with Catholics, Episcopalians, Methodists, Jews and Baptists and to engage in deep theological conversation with an incredible diversity of folks. I was repeatedly surprised to hear them struggle with and often reject those images of a vindictive, misogynistic, homophobic God and offer instead a variety of visions of the divine all of which were bigger and more inclusive than I had ever imagined.

John Buehrens, a former president of the UUA writes “to those who tell me, ‘I don’t believe in God.’ I often reply. ‘Tell me about the God that you don’t believe in,’ ‘The changes are that I don’t believe in Him either’” [“Experience” by John Buehrens in “Our Chosen Faith”] Whether we are atheists, theists or agnostics, when we hear the word “God” a set of images and stories and feelings come immediately to mind. What I have come to understand is that for each of us that set of images and feelings is unique. When someone uses the word “God” I assume that I have some idea what is meant, but more and more I have come to realize that we will never know for sure what is really meant unless we ask, and listen.

Reflection part 2:
Many who do believe in God say that God is ineffable, can never truly be described or understood. By definition the word “God” refers to something so different from us as to be outside our capacity to comprehend. As Forrest Church said in our opening reading “None of us is fully able to perceive the truth that shines through another person’s window, nor the falsehood that we may perceive as truth.” So a tremendous amount of humility must accompany any discussion of the divine.

What we can understand is how our beliefs cause us to act in the world. Early Universalist Hosea Ballou argued that those who believed in a judging vindictive god tended to become judging and vindictive themselves. Since, in our limited human view, can never know the true nature of the divine, we can ask ourselves, “do my beliefs cause me to be more compassionate, more ethical than if I did not believe them?” We can ask “Does the model I use for understanding my relationship to the divine and to the world around me lead me inexorably towards working for a more just and sustainable world for all the beings who share this world with me?”

It is this question that brings us together as Unitarian Universalists week after week despite sometimes significant theological differences. Atheists, Christians, Neo-Pagans and Jews can worship together, because we know that ultimately metaphysical questions are most important as they are lived out day to day. Whatever you believe about God, may your beliefs lead you to help build a world shaped by beauty, justice and compassion. May it be so.

Heeding the Call (December 11, 2011)

2012-01-09T11:37:00.000-08:00

On the occasion of the installation of Rev. Doug Stearns at the Universalist Fellowship of Towanda

Readings:
Exodus 3:7-12
Exodus 4:10-14
"The Journey" by Mary Oliver

Sometimes when we hear folks talk about “calling” we imagine a scene much like the one in our reading today: an anthropomorphic God having a conversation with his chosen prophet. And so many of us who are humanist or atheist or agnostic, or who just don’t identify with an anthropomorphic deity discard this traditional idea. Today I would like for us to reclaim the idea of “calling” for Unitarian Universalists. And I’m going to get the help of one of those contemporary scriptures we Uus tend to rely on to help us connect to the holy- the poetry of Pulitzer prizing winning poet Mary Oliver, many of whose books of poetry are published by our own Beacon press. Her poem “the Journey” helps us imagine what “calling” might feel like to an ordinary modern person like us:

“One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,”

And I want to suggest to you that calling can be as simple as this. “One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began;” have you ever had that feeling, that you knew what you had to do? For the purposes of our service today, for purposes of our Uu lives, it doesn’t matter where that feeling comes from, because as Oliver goes on to write:

“there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,

Ah, here is the voice. Here is the language of calling. Perhaps we are called when we learn to recognize our own voice. And though that is critically important, and can take a lifetime to do, that is not all that calling is. Having a calling is not just about listening, but also about turning what you hear into action “One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began,” There’s the rub. And that rub is where the story of Moses points us toward a universal human experience, because I believe just about every prophet in the scriptures, when they hear the call say exactly what Moses said ‘Who am I that I should go?” I bet every one of us who had heard a call has also asked such a question.

I want to give a much less lofty example from my own life, an example of calling found in the most mundane of all places – in the trash. I remember coming home from shopping one day, and I unpacked my purchases I noticed that every single thing came in a plastic container that at least matched the bulk of the product. For example, I had bought maybe an ounce of moisturizer, which came in a plastic bottle, that came in a plastic box, that came in a plastic bag. I had bought a plastic toy for my son, that came in a giant plastic hermetically sealed container, which came in its own plastic bag. When I finally finished unwrapping my purchases I had a pile of trash that would fill a kitchen trash can. And though I had making such shopping trips for years, on this day for the first time something bubbled up from deep inside me and said. “That can’t be right”

But then of course my second thought was a sense of powerlessness. “This problem is way too big for me,” I thought” there’s nothing I can do about this. Our whole society cooperates to create that giant bag of non-recyclable trash. What are you gonna do?” And this, I believe is the moment that famous bible story describes. ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?’ IN fact, and I love this kind of storytelling, Moses protests 3 different times. He says first in Exodus 3 “ Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring he Israelites out of Egypt?” Then in Exodus 4 he says ‘‘O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.’’ and finally in Exodus 6 Moses asks ‘Since I am a poor speaker, why would Pharaoh listen to me?’

Well I sat carried that pile of trash around with me in my mind for a couple of weeks, like a pebble in my shoe. And then “one day I finally knew what I had to do, and began” I couldn’t worry about how small my actions would be, I couldn’t wait until everyone else had received the same calling,

“determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.”

I had to stop allowing that kind of waste into my life. I had to start carrying my own shopping bags, I had to stop buying products that were so packaging intensive, and I had to start learning something about the impact of all our plastic packaging waste on the planet. I had to reorganize my theology to include care for the earth in a more holistic way.

It took a few weeks for that simple vision to unfold and even longer until I bought my first canvas bags, and even longer before I remembered EVERY time I went shopping to bring them with me. And let me tell you I NEVER feel like Moses when the lady at the Target makes me bag my own items because she can’t deal with my non-standard bags, or when I have to walk back to the car in the rain to get the bags I forgot AGAIN.

Except it says right there in the bible that the greatest prophet of the Jewish tradition felt insecure and not up to the task : “O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue” I also am encouraged by the fact that Moses says he is STILL not eloquent “now that you have spoken to your servant” When we are called, we are called just as we are, with all our human failings and weaknesses. We are not let off the hook just because we are “slow of speech and slow of tongue”

In our Unitarian Universalist tradition, we don’t believe that the days of the prophets are past. We believe that a calling can and does come to anyone, not just the famous prophets of old, not just to our eloquent brother Aaron. We believe in the prophethood of all believers. One of the great 20th century Unitarian Theologians James Luther Adams coined this phrase. He writes:

"The churches of the left wing of the Reformation …demanded a church in which every member, under the power of the Spirit, would have the privilege and the responsibility of interpreting the Gospel and also of assisting to determine the policy of the church. The new church was to make way for a radical laicism -- that is, for the priesthood and the prophethood of all believers."

Adams was converted to his world view after visiting Nazi Germany in 1935 and seeing the complacency of the churches there. While in Germany Adams used his home movie camera to film great leaders like Karl Barth and Albert Schweitzer who worked with the church-related resistance groups, and also the pro-Nazi leaders of the Christian Church. By the time he came back to the US, he was more convinced than ever that any church any layperson or clergy was called to speak out, to act against such oppression. And any which could stand by and passively let such oppression happen, was irrelevant and impotent.

So if we are all prophets, what does it mean for us to be called? When I was at seminary we were often asked about our sense of call. Most of us had a story about a time when that still small voice in each of us, the voice we had “slowly begun to recognize as our own” had beckoned us to serve our UU congregations in one kind of ministry or another. But as the years of seminary and formation wore on, it became clear that this was not all there was to a call. There is not only this sense of inner rightness, of what “I am meant to do” but there must also be, our mentors assured us, a relationship between “What I am meant to do” and what the community needs. It is not simply enough for us to go into our places of silent meditation and emerge with this vision of our calling, our vocation. The passage from Exodus we read this morning begins with a witness of the realities of the local community

“I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings,”.

So we each of us have the capacity to be called by that inner voice that always tells us the truth, but that is only one part of the call, the other part of the call will come from the people around you, the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. A vocation (a word which comes form the Latin root “Vocare” meaning to call) is what we do in response to what the voice we hear inside, but also the voices we hear in the community of beings.

I had the honor or conducting a memorial service last week for a woman called Dale Bryner, who was a great artist and environmental educator. Her message to her children and to her students over those years had been clear- be exactly who you are, because you are wonderful, and know that you are part of something larger than yourselves that is happening, and that is going to be amazing.

As I carried Dale’s words around inside me this past week. I thought of you – the Towanda Universalist Fellowship, and your new minister Doug. You are still a small tribe, but you’ve been around since maybe 1866. Back then you had about 100 members. Over these past 150 years your congregation has ebbed and flowed, changed and been changed. Recently, when there were no services being held here, we thought maybe the life of this congregation was over, but then you were reborn. At this time of rebirth, this is what you must ask yourselves: Who are you? And what are you called to do? I challenge you to remember that your true vocation will be not only an interior calling, about how you will be together as a congregation and what you will learn about together, but your calling is also about the intersection where that place of inner integrity meets your place in the in the community of beings, and you will understand how you are called to serve the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

You may say to yourselves “but we are not eloquent, the community will not listen to us” but remember you don’t have to do it alone. Remember when Moses beseeches God saying “‘O my Lord, please send someone else.” And God says, though at this point he is getting to the end of his rope “What of your brother Aaron the Levite? I know that he can speak fluently; even now he is coming out to meet you, and when he sees you his heart will be glad.”

So when you are feeling “slow of speech” or otherwise not up to the task, remember the Rev. Stearns can speak fluently. Remember your friends are coming even now to meet you. Like Moses had his brother Aaron and his sister Miriam, you have not only my congregation, the UU Church of Athens and Sheshequin, which has been a partner of yours off and on for 150 years, but you have the Brooklyn Church, and all the churches of the Pennsylvania Universalist Convention, of the Joseph Priestly District, and of the UUA. You are not alone. You have allies in this community, in Towanda, and more who will emerge as you discover who you are, and how you are uniquely called to serve this your community.
I asked Doug, was there anything special he wanted to be sure you knew, as you set out on your covenant together. He said he wanted to give you courage for all that lays ahead for you as a congregation. I believe it is the sense of call that gives one courage. If you know what you have to do, if you begin to recognize that voice that is your own, then you will have the courage to stride deeper and deeper into the world. I wish for you the courage that comes from the strength of knowing who you really are, and the courage that comes from your desire to serve, knowing that you are part of something larger, and that it is going to be amazing.

Habit, Ritual and Addiction: Building a Day (January 8, 2011)

2012-01-09T09:53:00.000-08:00

Last summer my son Nick and I took advantage of a clergy scholarship to visit Star Island for the first time. This is a UU conference and retreat center on the Isle of Shoales off the coast of Maine and New Hampshire. It can be reached only by ferry. We stayed at the historic and now somewhat dilapidated Grand Oceanic hotel built in the 1800s when time when that sort of thing was all the rage. It was bought by a non-profit and started offering conferences in 1916. Many of the folks we met as we nervously boarded the ferry had been making the annual pilgrimage for years. There is a history center on the island where you can see old timey black and white photos showing people engaged in many of the same traditions that still live on there today. One of those traditions is polar bearing at 7:00 am. Now remember this island is pretty far north, and out a few miles into the Atlantic. The ocean water is not warm even on a sunny summer afternoon, but these folks start their day every morning with a walk out to the end of the dock and a dive into the chilly early morning water.

When I first heard of this tradition, I knew it was one that was not for me. Just taking a ferry out to this strange island to spend a week single morning it with my son and 200 some total strangers was challenge enough. But one day as I sat at lunch getting to know yet another new person, she told me that she was 80 and had been coming to the island for decades. I noticed around her neck the plastic beads that reward those brave enough to take the plunge. I was amazed. I had imagined a gang of burly 2-something men lining up on the dock in the early morning, but my dining companion said she never missed a morning. It was all the more remarkable since weather was just horrible for almost the whole week. There was drenching rain every day; Nick and I quickly ran out of dry clothes. The winds were so sever that the ferries to and from the island were canceled, and staying warm was a challenge even in the middle of the afternoon.

What got me through those rainy days so far from home, what I had to be sure of even before I registered for the program, was yoga. Every afternoon there were several programs to choose from, and I always chose yoga. I had discovered the first day that this was to be a gentle yoga class- the teacher was very specific about that. Some of the women who enjoy the same kind of vigorous yoga that I enjoy left the class to do their own practice, but in an island full of strangers, I needed a yoga community. Even though this was not the same kind of yoga I was used to, what was important to me was to have that yoga discipline to anchor my day. Even on the days when the storm was so intense that rain dripped through the roof onto the yoga mats of the folks in the back row, even on the days when a cold wind whipped through the swinging doors. Even, and this was the hard one, on the beautiful sunny day when sensible people played hooky from their workshops and basked in the sun after days of being locked up inside in the rain, there I was on my yoga mat.

That last weekend of our stay, the sun finally broke. Nick insisted we join the group of singers who gather each morning to walk the whole of the residential part of the island singing a wake-up song at every dorm and cabin. As we gathered, another group of folks sat in the white wooden rocking chairs on the deck enjoying a pre-breakfast cup of coffee and watching the island wake up. The polar bears were also gathering there at the edge of the dock in the glittering early morning sunlight. There were people of all shapes and sizes from elementary aged children to the octogenarian friend I had met at lunch earlier in the week. While I could see the appeal of taking an early morning walk around the island singing, I had this sudden knowing that I MUST polar bear before I left the island, or I would always regret it. So the next morning I got up even earlier, left my son abed, wrapped a towel around me and headed out to the dock. It was just as scary and cold and exciting as I’d thought it would be. There was a lovely sense of camaraderie, and after I proudly emerged from the water I reported to the guy in change for my very own plastic beads on a string to show I had been a polar bear at Star Island. I could see why those folks did it even in the cold and the rain. Because you felt like you had already DONE something, even before breakfast. No matter what else the day held, you had had your moment of excitement and camaraderie and you were awake and ready to face the day.

I thought about all the little traditions that made up the Star Island Experience, and how different people needed different things to make up their day- the folks who went door to door singing, the folks who gathered quietly on the deck with their coffee, the kids who massed in the snack bar in the evening, the night owls who walked out to the stone village for coffee house after the rest of us were tucking in for the night. I thought fondly of the morning worship after breakfast, and the procession of the lanterns in the darkness for worship at the close of day.

Here on this island where everything was new and strange to me, where the weather was so extreme that even the staff wasn’t quite sure what to do sometimes, there was something so grounding, so comforting and also strengthening about building those anchors into my day, that kept me from feeling adrift even in the tempestuous storms. Now I don’t know if yoga would have had that same grounding feeling if I had not had my yoga practice as part of my ordinary every day life for so many years. Day in and day out, when I am full of the energy of a spring day, or the excitement of learning a new challenging pose, or when I am grumpy, sleep deprived and even injured, yoga is there like an anchor.

Our everyday life is full of habits and rituals, whether or not we have been intentional about creating them. Being stuck on the 220 behind a water truck is probably not something you intentionally chose to be part of your day, but there it is, regular as clock work. Waiting for my son to get off the school bus is not something I have any control over, but there it is, a critical pillar of my day. Even the dogs know it is coming and start to run in little circles and pat me on the knee as that magical time approaches. Committing to dive into icy water every morning is an intentional choice, but many of the rituals and habits that make up our days we stumble onto accidentally. Because I work at home most mornings, I brew a pot of coffee and boil water for oatmeal while I get my son off to school. Then my work day starts with a quiet moment alone in the house, and whether I’m reading up on theology or writing the first sentences of a sermon, that cup of coffee is warm and lovely and helps ease the transition into the day. Recently when the morning was so cold and dark, and I had slept only restlessly the night before, I heard the sound of my alarm clock with despair and disbelief. Then I remembered- there would be that moment of warm coffee and warm oatmeal and quiet, and that gave me the will to get out of bed and begin the day. I didn’t mean to create that ritual, but there it is- a pillar of my day.

Now a couple of years back I was at a professional conference at this super fancy hotel- I had NEVER even been inside a hotel so fancy. It was so fancy that the planning committee hadn’t been able to afford the cost of the morning coffee break, so when we came out of our first event of the morning at 10:00 all the coffee had been cleared away. I just stood there incredulous and pouting in front of the empty space where just an hour before the coffee tureens had been. My anchor was gone! Here I was hundreds of miles from home and without my anchor! I ended up riding the elevator back up to the 10th floor to brew a pot of coffee in my hotel room. I think that was when I knew that my morning coffee wasn’t just a ritual, it was an addiction.

Sometimes the anchor that gets us through a stormy transition, or gets us out of bed in the morning becomes an albatross around our neck. We get in the habit of drinking a glass of wine with dinner, or a nightcap before bed, and we don’t realize until we try to go without how attached we are. Even something as vital and nourishing as food can become an unhealthy crutch. We turn to a favorite comfort food in difficult times, and soon our cardiologist explains that it is endangering our health. A teenager experiments with smoking and spends the rest of her life trying to break the habit. It is more than the power of habit and the comfort of daily ritual keeping us in an unhealthy rut. The same chemical process by which alcohol, illegal drugs or even certain prescription medications make us feel good traps us. We used to think that recovering from an addiction was merely a matter of will power but now we know that the chemicals in our body and brain are changed by such addictions and, the normal survival mechanisms in the limbic brain are overridden. Our brain tells us that only the drug we are addicted to will provide safety, satiety, security.
Once the very functioning of our brain has been altered, addiction becomes a disease, and requires a medical support. For example I had a roommate who was determined to stop smoking cold turkey. After about 24 hours of misery, he ran for the door like a man possessed- headed to the pharmacy for a patch to help him through the transition. But overcoming the chemical, biological part of addiction is only part of the solution. Because the warm cup of coffee that starts the day, the cigarette break, the drink after work, the snack before bed, these calm and comfort us because they have become anchors in our day. We cannot simply leave an empty hole where those anchors were dropped, we have to fill those transitions in our day with something new. We must practice those new anchors daily so that they are strong and comforting when we need them.

A few years back I was going through a very stressful time. I had built a life that was all work and no play, and felt out of balance. Moreover, I had recently lost about 60 pounds and was determined not to use food as a crutch to get me out of this latest difficult time. A friend asked what I enjoyed as a little girl. I thought back to my Elementary school years and remembered that I spent almost all of my free time doing 2 things, reading fiction and dancing around my room. It was at that moment that I developed a substantive Sci-Fi Fantasy habit. It was only a few days ago, however, when I realized as I stretched out on my mat that the reason I am so devoted to yoga is not only because it is good exercise and a form of meditation, but because as an adult I hardly ever get to dance around in a big open space like I did when I was little; I have built what I enjoy most about being alive right into my day.

As we enter the season of New Year Resolutions, a resolution like “stop smoking” or “start exercising” or “stop over eating” are noble and good. But the mere fact of decision must be linked with intentionally building a day. We increase the odds of success by taking time to reflect “when is it that I most need a cigarette” or “when am I most likely to grab an unhealthy stack” and figure out what you are really needing during that moment. And to ask yourself “what could I give myself in those moments that will someday provide the anchor that a cigarette or a handful of potato chips once provided.”

The ease with which we move within our habits and routines is the same inertial pull that makes changing those habits and routines so challenging. Instead of grooving along the comfortable familiar path we can follow without thinking, we are asking ourselves to stay awake in order to remember to turn left instead of right. Moving across the country is a difficult change, but skipping the nightcap, or ice cream or cigarette before bed is even more difficult, because it comes so easily. So be patient with yourself, encourage yourself. And most importantly give the day you are building your attention and love. When you create a beautiful day that you enjoy you are rewarding yourself and asking the part of your brain that releases dopamine to anticipate those new rewards. Is there something lovely you have always coveted for your life? Something healing and life affirming? Then give that to yourself every day as a gift.

At a continuing education training about addiction our presenter was explaining that part of the reason that Alcoholics Anonymous is so successful is that it offers new coping skills for times of stress to replace the crutches the old addictions provided. Healing the spirit is a critical part of recovery he said, and reminded us that the Lord’s prayer beseeches “give us this day our daily bread.” To him that prayerful request is not just about food, but about whatever gives the spirit sustenance. We need to feed our souls every day, and if we don’t have healthy life affirming ways of doing it, we run the risk of stumbling into unhealthy, addictive ways of making it through the big and little stresses of daily life.

How you build your day involves about 1000 different choices that usually we don’t think about, in the words of Nancy Schaeffer:

“The self is not one thing, once made,
Unaltered. Not midnight task alone, not
After other work. It’s everything we come
Upon, make ours: all this fitting of
What-once-was and has-become.”

As UUs we aren’t bound to pray 5 times a day like our Muslim neighbors. But that doesn’t mean we don’t need those anchors for our spirit every single day. What Anchors your day? What comforts you when times are stressful? What makes getting up in the morning possible? Whether it’s a plunge into icy cold water, a hot cup of coffee, a quiet hour with your partner, a walk alone in the evening, offer that anchor to yourself as a promise you can rely on. When we are building our day, we must be intentional about including our daily bread, about shaping a day to feed our soul in good times and in bad.

Hospitality (December 4, 2011)

2011-12-05T10:32:00.000-08:00

“So glad you’re here”
“So glad you’re here”
Like a mantra
They repeat with warm smiles
“you must be tired”
“you must be hungry”
“you must be cold”
“It means so much
that you would come
all this way to be with us”
“Do still drink decaf?”
“I made those walnut cookies you like
when I heard you were coming”
“honey take her bags”
“tell us about your trip”
“No, take my chair,
I’ll get another from the den”
“take your time”
“rest a while”
“stay as long as you like”
“so glad you’re here”
“so glad you’re here”

Hopefully each of us has at some point in our lives experienced really skillful hospitality; we have met the host or hostess who knows how to make us feel truly at home, easing our awkward transition to a new situation. Hospitality is a Mitzvah, that is to say a religious commandment not only in Judaism from which tradition we get the word “Mitzvah” but in many of the world’s religions. We offer hospitality because it is the right thing to do, the caring though to do. But I would like to suggest that it is also a spiritual practice, one that works on those who practice it. Today we want to consider the question, “if one took on hospitality as a spiritual practice, how might it change the one who practices, and how might it change the world?”

I begin with the easier question, how could a deep and skillful practice of hospitality change the world. For example, about 6 years ago this congregation took upon itself the task of becoming a “Welcoming Congregation.” This is the phrase used by the Unitarian Universalist Association to refer to a congregation who has intentionally opened their doors to Lesbian, Gay Bisexual and Transgendered persons. I’m sure it seemed unnecessary to many members of this congregation- Unitarian Universalists were one of the first denominations to ordain openly Gay and Lesbian clergy, and have long been at the forefront of the movement to widen this circle of inclusivity. But I know that in the first welcoming congregation I ever served things were not so simple. Many of those who joined in discussion groups and classes, and scanned the church for heterosexism, found that the issues were more complex than they had imagined. For example, we begin to notice hetero-presumptive language in talking about relationships. We realize that unless we publicly speak our intention to be inclusive, say by hanging a rainbow flag out front, folks would have no reason to assume that our church was any safer than those who publicly condemn same sex relationships. We realized that we each had to root out our own internalized homophobia, so that it would truly be a safe place for our gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered members to speak their stories. Queer clergy, like myself, had to be willing to say our truth as a gesture of hospitality, as it were, to others. Being a “Welcoming Congregation” takes commitment and self awareness and hospitality.

How could a deep and skillful practice of hospitality change the world? I remember the first time I attended the Gay Pride parade in San Francisco. As I watched the Dykes on Bikes roll by, leading off the festivities, my eyes welled with tears, grateful that San Francisco had become home to a community so long marginalized. To get a closer look at the parade, I found a line of sight from behind a fenced off seating area. It turned out I was standing behind a section set aside for folks in wheelchairs. It seems like just good common sense that persons in wheelchairs will need a large flat space in which to maneuver, and a lower line of site, but in so much of our history, no one bothered to make such a space. It occurred to me that the City of San Francisco was behaving like a loving family who always remembers to pull out a chair for Uncle Bob when he comes to Thanksgiving Dinner.

In the same way that my mother in law carefully makes a huge and luscious fruit salad whenever I come to visit so that I will feel at home each time we break bread together. In the same way that the Athens UU Church recently converted their mail room into a bathroom wide enough for a wheelchair. In the same way that even when we have no young children in our church we keep our nursery full of toys and supplies ready to make new children feel welcome. In the same way that Miss Manners advises us to occasionally spend one night in our guest bed to feel for ourselves the kind of sleep our friends might experience in our homes, we look around our world community with the eyes of a good host, wondering what we could do to make others feel at ease.

What makes this challenging, is that in assuming the role of host, we must view the world through the eyes of others; we must anticipate needs that are not necessarily our own. How do we create a welcoming space for all? This becomes most difficult when we realize that there are many subtle cultural factors which can make a community seem hospitable or hostile. Can we use language, for example, in a way that is understandable to people outside our field, to folks with different kinds of education, to persons who are unfamiliar with our idioms and colloquialisms? Our art, music, theology, all mark us as belonging to one demographic or another, and all have the power to include or exclude. It is one thing to renovate the bathroom or to hang a rainbow flag, but if radical hospitality is not a central value of our culture, our community, then these are merely superficial gestures. We may find ourselves in communities which are both figuratively and literally gated.

How could a deep and skillful practice of hospitality change the world? Imagine how this radical hospitality would impact our social and political policies if, for example, we considered immigrants to our country to be visitors, and ourselves to be their hosts. Imagine if we challenged ourselves to broadly apply our call to “give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free.” Imagine the impact on the doors of “race” or “class” if we approached them with radical hospitality.

Now we move on to a more difficult question: how could a deep and skillful practice of hospitality change our congregations? Let’s be clear. When we practiced a truly radical hospitality, it does change us. Members of this church still remember their struggle as they welcomed their first transgender members long before I came to be your minister. As a community and as individuals they had to reexamine their way of looking at gender and see if those old prejudices and taboos could be relinquished so that they might become truly welcoming. It was a time of soul searching for individuals and for the community as a whole. It lead this congregation into the Welcoming Congregation process for the first time. And change we did. Our new members stayed through what must have been a less than open-armed welcome, and continued to bless us with their gifts. A few folks who just could not open their arms to the new members left the congregation, but for all who stayed, being welcoming is now part of their identity, calling them to wonder “what other prejudices or oppressive structures might need to be opened up to make us more welcoming still?”

I can’t help but remember my first days in California when my husband and I were subletting student housing at the Franciscan School. Not knowing a soul in 3000 miles, we were taken completely aback when we opened our apartment door one day at the same moment our neighbor was opening his. He greeted us immediately with a smile and the words “Hello Protestant Neighbor!” He was very friendly, introduced himself, asked how we were settling in, and invited us to coffee “any time.” Eric and I, being from a less outgoing community, couldn’t figure out what his motivation might be. There was something a little weird about someone so friendly. But we eventually became great friends with our Catholic neighbor, and learned that he is indeed a wonderful host.

That summer afternoon in Berkeley our friend took the risk that he might frighten us off with his overture, that we might be more attracted to someone aloof and cool. This is the risk each of us takes when we extend ourselves, when we invite someone into our lives. They might judge us, they might use us, they might ignore us. More likely they will be grateful for the introduction, the generosity of spirit, the attempt to make them feel at ease. This boundary between “me” and “you” is one that must be confronted on both the spiritual and ethical journey. The edge between my ego and the other can be a scary, powerful place where we learn both about the world and ourselves. When we open ourselves to the stranger, the other, the unknown we open ourselves to learning and transformation. By approaching the limits of what is known and comfortable, our universe expands and perhaps our spirits expand as well.

But hospitality in congregations is not just about welcoming strangers and visitors. It is also about welcoming newcomers into the heart of our community, inviting them to “take off your coats and stay a while” as my Grandmother used to stay. Think about the things a good host offers you in their home to make you feel comfortable. For a short stay you need to know where the bathroom is, where to hang your coat. But when you are staying for a few days, you need to know how to get yourself a glass of water, where the towels are kept, how the shower works. You need not just to have someone fussing over you all the time (which works fine for a 3 hour visit). You need the information to really “make yourself to home.” Now what if you were going to stay… well, forever? You would need your own niche. Like when you introduce a new plant to your garden, if it can’t find a niche it will not flourish.

Next Sunday we are welcoming three new members into our community. Our challenge is to offer them not only a friendly smile, and a warm cup of coffee, but a meaningful way to engage in our community. They need a niche. Part of a deep practice of hospitality will be evoking from one another our gifts, Just as an apple tree provides fruit for humans and other critters, and shade for the soil and shade loving plants, some of our members give us the gift of music, others their thoughtful insights, or practical common sense, or warm hearts. We have to be open to the idea that newcomers will bring new gifts we have never experienced before. Just because there has not previously been a knitting group, doesn’t mean there can’t be one. Newcomers bring us gifts that will change us. The other part of our practice of hospitality is to discover and respond to one another’s needs for nourishment. Much as some garden plants need sun and others need shade, some members of our community need quiet private conversations, and others thrive in large, lively groups. Some folks need a way to be in community that involves their children. Others need a way that works around their strenuous works schedule. By being aware of and responsive to newly emerging needs for nourishment, our “Support our aging parents” group was created, and “coming of age” was offered to our youth for the first time.

If we offer truly radical hospitality, we will be changed, we will be transformed as a congregation and as individuals. Let’s try this. Please stand up if you came to this church for the first time in 2011. Now stand up if you came for the first time in 2010. Now stand if you came for the first time since 2000. Imagine how different our congregation would be without these folks. (You can all sit) Now anyone who has been a member for more than 3 years please stand. These folks all stayed because they found a niche, a special unique place in our community where they could share their gifts and also be nourished. In gratitude for the place each of us has found here, we offer the gift of hospitality to all, because and even though it will change our beloved community.

Finally the most difficult question of all: how could a deep and skillful practice of hospitality change the individual who practices it? In his book “The World’s Religions” Huston Smith describes a noble quality of chun tzu. He writes
“Fully adequate, poised, the chun tzu has toward life as a whole the approach of an ideal hostess who is so at home in her surroundings that she is completely realized, and, being so, can turn full attention to putting others at ease…the chun tzu carries these qualities of the ideal host with him through life generally. Armed with a self-respect that generates respect for others, he approaches them wondering not, “What can I get from them” but “What can I do to accommodate them?”
If we engage the world with the quality of Chun tzu, a feeling of always being at home, where might that practice lead? In order to risk extending ourselves, we must first know that we are at home in this world. I believe this logic is reversible as well; if we can act as a host wherever we go, perhaps it will remind us that this world is in fact our home.

This practice of hospitality can be a spiritual one not only in the way it brings us in contact with our own boundaries and limits, but extending the notion one step further, in the way we invite that transcending mystery and wonder into our lives. My seminary professor Yielbanzie used to remind us: “If you want to have spirit in your life, you have to invite spirit into your life.” We treat the ineffable with the same respect and care that we would a neighbor, a guest, a stranger or a friend. Perhaps if we adopt the role of host, it will give us the courage to come closer to God, or if we are an atheist, to whatever is of ultimate concern in our lives.

When I was starting my internship at the Mount Diablo UU Church, I nervous about the many things I would be doing for the first time, but I was most terrified of the coffee hour. Oh the agony of standing on the patio trying not to look uncomfortable, hoping someone would talk with me. I decided, nonetheless, that this was my job now. People expected their minister to make them feel welcome, to play the host. I realized that it was important that I take the risk that visitors might leave saying “boy they would not leave us alone!” rather than wondering why no one had approached them, why they felt more lonely after coming to church than before. And so that first day on the patio I screwed up my courage, deputized myself with the nametag reading “Darcey Laine, Intern Minister” and challenged myself to engage as many strangers as I could. I tried to imagine who might welcome that extra effort. Certainly newcomers deserved a warm welcome. Obviously those who had shared some pain or joy during “caring and sharing” might want a chance to talk further. The children and youth of the congregation needed to feel that the ministers of the congregation are their ministers too. And the list went on. Before long there were so many people I wanted to connect with, that I had hardly gotten started each week before the patio cleared out and I was left to turn out the lights and lock the doors. I understood that hospitality is one of the primary gifts of a church community, one member to another.

Hospitality is not identical to love, because it pays attention to the boundaries between individuals, between peoples. We treat the other with dignity, humble in the awareness that there is much we do not know about one another, yet when we extend ourselves to put another at ease, we act from a position of personal power. We welcome courageously and with skill those who knock at our door.

Today when coffee hour beings, I have my nametag labeling me as “Reverend Laine”, deputizing me officially to act as host for this community. But it is not because I’m a minister of this Church that I have the right and the responsibility to be a host, but because I’m a member of this community. I hereby deputize all of you to be a host at our social hour, and out in the world. Think of your nametag be your deputy’s badge - a symbol of your job as greeter, host, vice-president for east coast introductions and friendliness to strangers. Let this deputy’s badge remind us of one of the oldest and most important religious practices- remembering this world is your home, and so making one another feel welcome in this world.

Building from the Ground Up (November 6, 2011)

2011-11-10T10:35:00.000-08:00

Reading:
"MAKING THE DESERT BLOOM, SUSTAINABLY" from Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway

In 1986, [sculptor Roxanne Swentzell] moved onto a parcel of bare land on the Santa Clara homelands. She describes the place as "no trees, no plants, no animals, just pounded-down dirt and lots of ants." She and her two young children built a passive-solar adobe house and began planting. But the climate was too harsh. Dry winds swept down from the scoured, overgrazed hills and burned up the seedlings, killing those that hadn't frozen in winter or baked to husks in summer.

Local permaculture designer Joel Glanzberg …helped her ferret out techniques for gardening in the desert. They dragged in rocks and logs to shade seedlings, and dug shallow ditches, called swales, to catch precious rainwater and create sheltered, moist microclimates. To cast much-needed shade and generate organic matter, Joel and Roxanne planted just about any useful drought-tolerant plant, native or exotic, that they could find. Thirstier species they placed within reach of the … irrigation ditch, that surged with water once a week by tribal agreement.

They hauled in manure and mulch materials to build rich soil that would hold moisture through drought. Once the hardy young trees and shrubs had taken hold, they set more delicate plants in their shade. They blended berry bushes and small fruit trees into an edible hedge along the north border, to provide the family with food as well as to block the winds that roared down the nearby canyon. All these techniques combined into a many-pronged strategy to build fertile soil, cast shade, damp the wild temperature swings of the desert, and conserve water. Together, these practices created a mild, supportive place to grow a garden.

Roxanne told me, "The garden was hard to get started, but once the little seedlings took off, then boy, they took off." At my visit, the landscape was eight years old, and trees, where none had been before, were as tall as the two-story house. Blessed, cooling shade, from dense to dappled, halted the searing rays of the sun. Instead of baking the soil, the fierce solar heat was absorbed by the thick leafy canopy and converted into lush greenery, mulch, food, and deep-questing roots that loosened the soil. ... Even in the shade, a many-layered understory of shrubs and small trees divided the yard into a path-laced series of small rooms.

I caught glimpses of birds dancing from twig to twig before they disappeared into the shrubbery. A constant rustling and chirping enveloped us on all sides, and I knew that dozens more birds were hidden in the foliage. … Roxanne carried pruning shears with her as she walked, and lopped off the occasional too-exuberant branch from [the] vigorously growing trees and shrubs that lined the paths. These would feed her turkeys, or become more mulch.

Roxanne and her helpers had rejuvenated a battered plot of desert, created a thick layer of rich soil, and brought immense biodiversity to a once-impoverished place.

Sermon:
Before I begin, I want to say a little something about the sermon series this worship service is a part of. This year the worship team has chosen to explore in a series of sermons the principles of permaculture, which is a school of agricultural and garden design in which human and environmental sustainability are they key values. Wiccan religious leader and activist Starhawk uses a different name for these- “Principles of True Abundance.” This is really at the heart of what we are doing with this series- look at principles that will bring true and lasting abundance to not only our human community, to our spiritual lives, and to our eco-systems. It is a system of values and virtues that we learn from the earth. With this series we ask ourselves this year “how are our lives like a garden?”

I believe that though it is an objective fact sometimes folks who have plenty of money they are not living lives of true abundance. And I know folks who live lives of abundance without much money.

Today, I want to talk about how sometimes building from the ground up can help us create true abundance in our gardens and in our lives.

I love my house. It is a little slanty and crooked in places, since it was built in 1890 and has been “settling” ever since. But from the moment we saw it we know it was for us. We love the kitchen. It is about twice the size of our old kitchen in California, and there is plenty of storage and counter space for everything we want to do. Here’s the thing though, that we didn’t really think about until we’ve lived in it for a while. The refrigerator is right by the door to the kitchen, so if someone has the refrigerator open, no one can enter or exit the kitchen. The dishwasher door opens right in front of the sink, so that if the dishwasher is open, no one can use the sink to, say, pre-wash the crud off a plate before putting it in the dishwasher. Someone didn’t think that through when they were installing the updated cabinets into this hundred year old house, and so it will annoy us multiple times a day for as long as we live in this home. As Permaculture designer Patrick Whitefield writes “Time spent in careful and patient observation before acting will pay for itself many times over when you are planning permanent fixtures like woods, buildings and earthworks.” (Permaculture in a Nutshell p. 38) Our kitchen is an example of a design that wasn’t patiently thought through before it was implemented.

So why did we buy a house with poorly positioned appliances? Because the house itself is positioned just exactly where we wanted it. This whole story begins when we were living in California. We were 20-60 minutes from everything. Nearest friend? 20 minutes away. Yoga studio? 20 minutes away. Daycare? 20 minutes away. And those were the close things. My commute? 25-45 minutes each way. The farms that supplied the local CSA programs were about 100 miles away. All the great culture in San Francisco that we moved to the Bay area to enjoy? 60 minutes away on a good day, 2 hours away during the weekend rush-hours. Anything you wanted to do involved sitting in bumper to bumper traffic on a 6-8 lane road. We had looked for a home where we could walk to things, but those pedestrian friendly towns were way out of our price range. And a house in a good school district? Definitely out of our price range.

Our decision to move 3000 miles was made after a lot of patient observation and thinking and planning. We learned that in Ithaca ordinary people like us could afford a home in a good school district. Moreover, if we were willing to sacrifice a few things like off street parking and a big yard, we could even afford to live in walking distance to things worth walking to. I can’t tell you how happy we are now to live 3 blocks from a public library, 4 blocks from 2 different yoga studios, restaurants, coffee shops, grocery stores. We re-built our life from the ground up.

Permaculture teaches us that (Permaculture in a Nutshell p. 25) “ A year’s careful planning is much better than a rush to get he plants into the ground followed by a lifetime’s regret” So the first thing to do is just to observe, and watch. And maybe make a map of all the things you notice and observe. Then when you begin to build, you can make use of the microclimates, the trees, the existing communities already in place. So for example, one of our dreams when we came to Ithaca was to have a little coffee shop where musical events would happen. Thank goodness we didn’t start that project before we’d had a chance to observe because it turns out that niche is already filled in Ithaca. Before tearing down the old to build something new, stop and listen and observe. The vision you may have in your mind can and should change as it meets the very specific and very local place you want to plant your garden or build a life.

Now once it is time to plant and build, you have a better idea from all your observation of what will flourish where. One of the main ideas of permaculture in gardening is the idea of zones. It’s a simple idea but one we don’t use as often as we could. For example, you put the things you use every day right by your back door. If you want herbs in your morning omelets, and cherry tomatoes in your dinner salad, plant your herbs and cherry tomatoes right by the back door so you can get them without getting your bedroom slippers wet. That’s called zone 1. The compost bin should be close enough to the kitchen so that you don’t procrastinate taking the compost out because you hate tromping through the mud to get there. Then zone 2 is things you don’t need to look at every day, This is the area of your yard that you put on your old gardening clothes on a Saturday to work with, for example pick stewing tomatoes for canning. These areas can be further from the house. Zones 3 and 4 are farther from the house, things you only need to deal with once or twice a year. I don’t have these zones in my yard. Zone 5 is the edge of your property, the wild part of your property, whether it backs up on uncultivated woodlands, or onto a downtown parking lot. Permaculture design is very supportive of leaving wild un-tended places in our own lives and in our ecosystems.

But I think it’s not much of a leap to apply this idea of zones in our lives beyond gardening. For me Zone two includes my yoga studio and the library. These are places I go several times a week. I assure you that since I moved my home to within a few blocks of the yoga studio, from a house where it was a 20 minute drive, (more if there was traffic) I do a lot more yoga. Same with the library. So We chose our home with the idea of what we wanted in our “Zone 2” Once we bought our home, we had other decisions to make about what would fall in which zone, even though our property is so small all of our yard is really zone 1. When I first moved to Ithaca I got recommendations for a dentist about half an hour form our house, but I was persistent, and managed to find a good dentist who is about a 25 minutes walk or a 5 minute drive from our home. I recently found a primary care physician about a 15 minute walk away, and a vet who is about a 10 minute walk away. Even City Hall and the places where most political rallies are held are walking distance from my home. Because we spend that time at the beginning finding a home in the right location, and finding services that are located in walking distance, I can say to my partner “you can have the car all day, I can walk to everything I’m going to do today”

Once you are done observing and ready to roll up your sleeves, remember to build from the ground up. The first step is the earth moving and amending. If you need to change a slope or amend the soil, it is much better to do this before you plant anything. The next thing to do is to plant trees, because they take a long time to mature and they are going to impact the little microclimates in your yard and garden by changing the areas of shade and sun, they are also going to form complicated relations with their roots that you don’t want to disrupt later.

I think that story of Roxanne’s desert garden is a wonderful example of building from the ground up. The first time she planted everything died. But by planning carefully, by moving rocks and building walls and digging swales, those first plants were able to take root and grow.

I want to draw another parallel with how we plan our lives. There are some things that we may wish were in our lives, but we never seem to have the time for them. Maybe we’ve always wanted to go back to school. Maybe we want to spend more time at home with our family, or supporting an aging parent, but there so much going on we can never seem to find the time. Let’s think of those like trees in a forest garden. What are the metaphoric trees you’ve been wanting to grow in your life? The big things that might take years and years? The things you are never going to have time to squeeze in before dinner one night. Like any time management schema, you might find in the business section of the bookstore, this value of “building from the ground up” shows is that we need to plant these big important long-growing things first, or there will never be room in our lives for them.

Now I don’t want to discourage folks who already have full lives and are realizing there is a tree missing. Many folks get to midlife and realize that the life they planted as a young adult could be better planned. Permaculture teaches us that is certainly easier to do this planning when you are building something new, but sometimes we need to move structures if there is going to be a long term benefit. Take our move from California to New York. It took a lot of energy, worry, planning and money to make a move of that magnitude, but because we spent a lot of time and though planning and knew what we were trying to plant, it was worth it for us.

Because we weren’t just guided by a vision of life with more cafes and bookstores, we were also motivated by a vision of a life that left less of a carbon footprint, a life without quite so many hours on the freeway. Maybe a life with only one car! Part of our vision was about leaving a sustainable and fertile world for our children and grandchildren. And I don’t just mean from an ecological perspective, but from a perspective of justice and equality for all.

When I was a brand new minister with a brand new baby, the other parents would commiserate with me- it’s hard to work for justice when you have children. It’s impossible to find time for your spiritual life when you are a parent they would say. The metaphor of the permaculture garden shows us that if those things seem too far out of reach, we need to move those things, those critical important things into zone one. If you can’t move your whole family nearer to your yoga studio, keep your yoga mat in the living room where you always see it. Build your altar next to your desk, keep your senator’s phone numbers on the desktop of your computer where they are so easy to find you can use them every day. Find a place at your daughter’s soccer practice where you can sit under a tree and meditate.

There is one more concept that gives help to those of us who feel there is no room in our lives for some of these critical important things, like spirituality, or relationships or justice. It is called “stacking.” “Nothing in nature has only one purpose- it’s furiously efficient this way” (Gaia's Garden p. 26) Remember Roxanne had planted fruit bearing shrubs that cut the wind. Those shrubs give her two gifts instead of only one. Her walnut and pomegranate trees provide not only food for her family, but have a critical function providing shade for the other plants, and their deep roots loosen the soil. Stacking is not the same as multitasking, it is about collaboration and synergy. I want to suggest that in our lives we don’t have to choose between time to leave a legacy and time to play with your kids, you can plant a tree together which does both, and one that bears fruit and it can be a tree that you can meditate under. That’s what nature would do.

The final thing we want to hold with this idea of building from the ground up has to do with relationships. Grass roots community organizing uses this idea. The basis of organizing is talking to people. Getting to know them. Getting to know what scares them, what they are worried about, whether it’s the health of our planet or the need for a stop sign near the school. Then when it’s time to act you can incorporate everyone’s worries and need into the plan, but you don’t’ stop there, you keep talking to one another, you keep building relationships you stay in touch. Have you ever planned a big party and sent out invitations and not as many people showed up as you had hoped for? When you build an event from the ground up, you start with the people. You start talking to them well in advance and making sure the date works for everyone, including them in the process and asking for their advice and input. By the night of the big party, or if we are talking about community organizing, by the night of the big Action, if you pretty much have spoken to everyone who you hoped would be involved, you will have a clear picture of who will be there.

Big culture changes in these past 2 centuries have happened because the people joined together to create a swell of momentum. Movements like civil rights and GLBT rights and women’s rights were built from the ground up. By the time legislation was passed in the Congress, those representatives and senators knew their constituents would stand behind them and back their decisions. We see this same premise in the Occupy movement. A group of ordinary citizens building consensus about what concerns them and what they are calling on our country to do. I’m not saying there aren’t leaders, that there isn’t organization, but the organization starts from the ground up. “Real change takes place from the bottom up, not form the top down." [Intro to Permaculture p. 5]

True abundance is not really about having what you want when and where you want it. True abundance is not about having it all right now. Sometimes the most effective thing to do is just to watch, and listen and wait. We gather information and make a plan. And in that plan we start with those critical things we can’t skip over if we want our plan, our vision to succeed. Whether we are planning for a garden, for a life of meaning, or a more just and sustainable world, we start by watching and noticing. Then we plant the trees- those long term slow growing pillars of our vision that will protect and nourish not only our own lives but those of our children and grandchildren. We take the time to consider what things we need close to hand, and which can be further away. And we take time to understand the needs and dreams of those around us as we build relationships and set down roots, these will give strength and cohesiveness to our shared and enduring vision as they are planted in the ground. True abundance is about stepping out on your patio in your bare feet and clipping fresh chives and cherry tomatoes fresh off the vine for your morning omelet. True abundance is having a beautiful library in walking distance from your home. True abundance is having a community of people working for a common vision.

Facing Death (October 30, 2011)

2011-11-01T16:56:00.000-07:00

I am 4 years old, laying in bed at night, afraid to go to sleep because the inevitability of my non-being has dawned on me. I am afraid to die.

I am 5 years old, lying in bed at night, remembering what we learned in school about volcanoes, about earthquakes. My mother tries to re-assure me: there are no volcanoes in Pennsylvania. I tell her I am afraid of earthquakes. She tells me earthquakes only happen in California. This doesn't help. I am afraid of dying.

I am 24 years old. I am in California, I moved here to attend seminary because I still don't understand how to live knowing that I will die. I had thought that maybe if I spent a few years studying the wisdom of the world religions I might finally understand this mystery; I might finally find some peace. The Bay Bridge has only recently been repaired from the Loma Prieta earthquake when the top level collapsed onto the bottom level, killing those trapped on the bridge at that unlucky moment. I white knuckle my way across the bridge at least once week. I am afraid of death.

I enroll in a Buddhism class without knowing what a good idea this is -- to start my inquiry with a tradition that looks directly in the face of death. I mean this figuratively, but also literally. Our teacher is a Theravadan monk, and our textbooks are not from American Buddhism, but Buddhism as it is practiced Malaysia. In that land when a person dies, the professor Bhanti explains, they are not buried under ground, but laid out to decompose. We read in our text Buddhist Meditation: In theory and practice about the Asubha Bhavana, a meditation on the ten stages of the decay of the body after death. The text explains in great detail the preparations leading up to the meditation, and the many things that should be noted during the meditation on a dead body decaying in the graveyard. I am shocked.

I don't, actually, meditate on a corpse, but I do imagine what it would be like not to jerk my eyes away when I see a squirrel lying on the ground. What if I could just breathe, in and out? What if I could cross the Bay Bridge, knowing that earthquakes do happen here, and that bridges do collapse, and I could just breathe. I encourage myself not to run away from the idea, I don't push it away but I allow it to be present, and then without grasping let it fade. I develop the habit of mind of looking at my fears as unflinchingly as I can. It makes me feel braver.

I take the required systematic theology class, and have the good fortune of studying with Bob Kimball, who is a very wise man and who exposed me to the writings of his teacher, the Theologian Paul Tillich. Tillich says that there is only really one source of anxiety, and that is the anxiety of non-being. “The ontological question, the question of being-itself, arises in something like a “metaphysical shock” – the shock of possible nonbeing.’ (Systematic Theology p. 163) I recognize that metaphysical shock from when I was a little girl with anxiety- induced insomnia. Tillich writes “Finitude in awareness is anxiety…” We attach that anxiety to real things, like earthquakes or volcanoes and they become fears, but really at the root is this anxiety of non-being. “A danger, a pain, an enemy, maybe feared, but fear can be conquered by action. Anxiety cannot, for no finite being can conquer its finitude. Anxiety is always present, although often it is latent” (p. 191) And finally I understand why as I tossed and turned grappling with my own non-being when I was just a little girl my mother couldn't comfort me.

And what is it that does assuage this anxiety? Courage, the “Courage to be." How do we find the courage to be, knowing that our lives are finite? Tillich uses an “ontological argument” which means that if we can conceive it, it must exist; Because we can imagine the courage, it already exists in us.

Tillich writes “In order to experience his finitude, man must look at himself from the point of view of a potential infinity. In order to be aware of moving toward death, man must look out over his finite being as a whole; he must in some way be beyond it.” Tillich’s language is difficult, and I slog through even the smallest reading assignments. But Prof. Kimball is patient, and passionate about the power of Tillich’s work, and I challenge him and challenge him across his desk during our seminar which gathers weekly in a small circle in his office. Some courage begins to grow in me.

I am researching a paper and I read these words by the psychologist Erich Fromm, and copy them into my journal: “The common suffering is… the awareness that life runs out of one’s hand like sand, and that one will die without having lived.” This is it; my greatest fear here in this book. Finally I understand what I have to do. I have to live. I have to live passionately, creatively, vibrantly right now, living a life so full that when it comes time to die it will have been enough.

This is the heart of what I want to talk to you about today. I believe that whenever we realize that we are mortal, whether it is because of something scary the doctor finds during routine tests, or just because the reality of our fragility comes fully to mind, it changes how we see our lives. It changes what seems important and what seems urgent.

So I want to invite you to join me in a moment of meditation. This meditation is by our dear Thich Nhat Hanh meditation from Blooming of the lotus
(Exercise 10 p. 50-51)

When we dare to become present with our own impermanence, what thoughts rise? What is that comes to mind when you allow into your awareness the reality that each of us will die? That you yourself will die?
[pause for meditation]

What things in your life surge to importance when you look at your life from that vantage point? when you look back at your life today, as if there might be no tomorrow for you, what parts of your life are you most proud of? most grateful for?

[pause for meditation]

The next is a more difficult question- when you look back at your life as if from the end, are there things you feel are missing from your life? Lost opportunities or dreams? Some of these lost dreams that come to mind we can only grieve: if we turned away from a path we regret never taking, if we wish we had spent more time with a loved one who is now deceased. It is healing to take time to grieve these losses, these parts of our life that never were. To grieve and let go of that which will not be, even if that takes time and patience, lightens us for whatever is ahead.

The greatest gift of facing the reality of our death is that we can make choices about the time that remains for us. If you learned today that your remaining life had a discreet number of days, what would you do?
Would you reconcile with long lost friends or family?
Would you forgive or ask for forgiveness?
Would you finally live out an old dream- to hike the Appalachian trail, to go back to school and become a nurse?
[pause for meditation]

Now I am Forty-something, and it has been many years since I laid awake at night anxious about my non-being. I do, occasionally, face my own mortality, or more often I face the mortality of people I love so dearly that I know their death will leave a hole, a scar in my spirit.

Our state of mind when we face death is different than our ordinary state of mind. On any given day, our priorities may be to get to the grocery store, to finish a project at work, to finally clean out those gutters, to play bridge with friend. But death gives us a different perspective; it makes us think of life as a whole piece. It helps us clarify our values. Being present with our own mortality sometimes helps us let the dinner dishes sit if it means we can spend time in conversation with our family, it helps us take the time off work to see the sun set over the pacific. We put off raking the leaves to get our will in order, to make sure our family is taken care of after we are gone.

Buddha, the enlightened one, was once stopped on the road and asked by a man, "Sir, are you a god?"
"No." Said the Buddha.
"Are you a demigod then?" asked the man.
"No." replied Buddha.
"Then are you great man?" asked the passerby. "No." replied the Buddha again.
"Then what are you sir." The man final asked.
"I am the one who is awake." Replied Buddha as we went on his way.

The realization of our own death comes to us as a wake-up call. Sometimes it nudges us to be fully present to this very moment, even to our fears, because the more we are present the more we will know that we are really living. When we face death this precious moment, the way it is, fully lived by us is enough. Sometimes our fear tells us that we are afraid of dying un-reconciled, unfulfilled. When we face death we realize how lucky we are to still have time to reconcile, to connect, to fulfill our dreams. Death robs us of complacency, but shows us what it means to live.

Taking Root (October 2, 2011)

2011-10-03T08:58:00.000-07:00

It is easy for Unitarian Universalists to feel rootless. For so many centuries we have been out on the growing edge of religious, ethical, and philosophical thought. Folks hear that we are a non-creedal faith and say “UUs can believe anything they want” but for us it is not a creed that keeps us grounded, it is our principles and our roots. As one of my old professors at Seminary used to say about our movement “This wasn’t something that was born at an EST seminar in California in the 1970s.” No, we have deep roots, and as we learned in the story of the trees of Kenya, the deep roots of the trees protect the soil and the water, and keep it from blowing away in the wind and drying up in the sun. Without deep roots the land becomes a desert. This is the 3rd principle in our sermon series this year on the principles of permaculture, principles that will guide us toward a more sustainable and abundant culture for all beings on our planet. The principle is simply this: “Take Root” -- connect to our ancestors and to the local.

This principle is not only true for soil and trees and eco-systems, it is also true for our hearts and minds and spirits. For example when we proudly declare ourselves to be a welcoming congregation, welcoming to all people be they Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, Bisexual or straight, that welcome has so much more strength when we realize it is rooted in our universalist theology- the idea that every single person has inherent worth and dignity, a 20th century idea rooted in our centuries old Universalist heritage which says that God is all loving, that god loves all people, that all people will be reunited with God and with one another at the end of days. All are chosen, all are saved. We draw not only on our contemporary principles and values when we protect the rights of our GLBT neighbors and friends, but I feel in me the fiery passion of our stump preaching ancestors, who called on the power of God’s all encompassing love and power to save. Like a tree drawing water and nutrients from its roots, I feel powerful and strong when I call on the wisdom of my ancestors.

The history of Unitarian Universalism is often told something like this: In the 1500s a Spanish physician named Michael Servetus, the same man who discovered respiration in the lungs, published a book called “On the Errors of the Trinity.” He believed that God was one, and that the bible did not say anything about a trinity. He was burned at the Stake by John Calvin in 1553 for refusing to retract this statement.

During this time, such ideas were traveling across Europe. Just a decade later in Transylvania [1568] a young king, John Sigismund was convinced to listen to great preachers of different sects of the Christian tradition before he name the state religion. A preacher named Frances David won the day with his ideas about how the trinity was not in the bible, and how “we need not think alike to love alike.” David advised King John that not only his Unitarian ideas but all Christian religious groups should be allowed to co-exist under an “edict of tolerance.” Now groups of Unitarians began to worship together for the first time under this name. Other strains of Unitarianism grew in Poland and in England.

But Unitarian ideas continued to be met with persecution. Joseph priestly, an English Scientist and Unitarian Minister fled to America after his laboratory was burned to the ground because of his ideas. [1791]

Many in America were responding to a powerful fundamentalist movement called “The Great Awakening.” This was revival movement that grew out of Calvinism. Opponents of this movement emphasized the importance of reason and logic, an approach to the bible that valued historical and critical thinking, and the importance of ethics. Unitarianism is one of the movements that grew out of this opposition.

But the Unitarian churches were still part of the state-sponsored church system. Universalism, which had its roots in similar ideas, believed in a separation of church and state, and were allied with radical fringe groups like the Quakers. Universalism grew up in opposition to Calvinism, which said that only a certain small group had been chosen by God at the beginning of time to go to heaven; The rest of us were going to hell.

Universalists thought that the damnation of most of humanity did not harmonize with the concept of an all powerful all loving God, and they centered their faith with the idea that all persons could be saved. It was in the second generation of American Universalists that this church was founded, that our lovely historic building was built in Sheshequin.

The Unitarian and Universalist movements grew alongside one another. Both were deeply impacted by the transcendentalist movement, which preferred the natural world over the biblical literalism on which even the old-school Unitarians built into their faith. Transcendentalists like Channing, Fuller and Emerson wanted to strip away the historic structures and teachings of the church and center their faith in the direct experience of God. The transcendentalists also introduced Eastern thought into our movement, widening the web of our roots beyond the Judeo-Christian tradition.

This was also a great time for Social Justice as Unitarian and Universalist preachers and activists worked to end slavery, worked to give women the right to vote, and work in other areas which badly needed reform like the Prison and Mental Health systems. Pioneers like Olympia Brown, the first woman ordained into the ministry of an organized denomination in this country, paved the way for gender equality in our own Universalist Tradition.

In the 20th century, the humanist notion that one could be religious and ethical without God was a powerful one in our movement. 20th century Unitarians were atheists, agnostics and theists, humanists and Christians.

In 1961 the Unitarians and the Universalists merged into one association. Together we were allies and activists in the civil rights movement. The women’s movement lead us to re-consider how we thought about God, and searching for a concept of the divine that honored women, we encountered the ancient pagan ideas of God the mother, and were inspired by the ideas of the neo-pagan movement. We have been and still are leaders in the rights of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender persons. Today we provide a bridge between the secular and the sacred, among faiths and theologies.

But we have roots that go even deeper than that. I think of the church I used to serve in California. They had a beautiful Madrone branch as hung behind the pulpit for as long as anyone could remember. I thought about the symbolism of a branch without a trunk, without roots. I used to joke that maybe the place where that branch was cut from its tree is a symbol of the execution of Servetus -- Our break from the Catholic Church and our Protestant cousins. But it is shortsighted to consider a branch apart from the tree, and now I want to say something about the symbolic tree on which this branch grew.

Frances David and Michael Servetus were both raised Catholics, and were part of the protestant reformation that rocked the western world. The Church of England, the Calvinists, the Baptists and many other protestant movements blossomed and evolved within a generation of Martin Luther, the Augustinian Monk, nailing his 95 thesis to the church door in 1517. Luther had been upset about corruption in the Catholic Church, and had grown in his disputes with Catholic theology.

With the invention of the printing press in 1450, common people could now read and interpret the bible for themselves. The spread of the printed bible translated into the popular tongues created a grass-roots movement within the Catholic Church.

The Roman Catholic Church had become the legal religion of Western Europe, tightly allied with political and financial power. Monastic movements, like those founded in the 12th century by St. Francis and in the 5th century by St. Benedict created an alternative to the wealth and corruption which infected the power structures of both church and kingdom. Men and Women religious took oaths of poverty and devoted their daily life to sharing work and to cultivating the spirit.

At the same time mystics like Meister Eckhart and Hildegard of Bingen held at the center of their faith a direct experience of the divine (roots of the transcendentalists). Throughout Christian history there was a perennial tension between those keepers of the church traditions and institutions and those mystics and martyrs who held themselves accountable only to God, playing at the edges of heresy.

Arius, a parish priest at the turn of the 4th century, found himself on the heretical side of the Nicene Creed when in 325 the Council of Nicaea drew its theological line in the sand. Arius had taught that God created a Son who was the first creature, but who was not equal to God. According to Arius, Jesus was a supernatural creature not quite human and not quite divine. Some call Arius an early ancestor of Unitarianism.

Though there was as yet no council to declare him heretical, many controversies have followed the teachings of Origen of Alexandria, who lived a century before Arius. (185-232) He preached the eventual return of all souls to a perfection in proximity to God (an early ancestor, some say, of the Universalists).

Before Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and issued The "Edict of Milan" (CE 313), which ended the persecution of Christians by the Roman Empire, the early followers of Jesus were enemies of Rome, tortured and punished by death. Paul, who is credited with forming the early church, was imprisoned and writes about his imprisonment in the New Testament. Early Christianity was a religious movement which identified strongly with its crucified teacher. It was an egalitarian movement, a reform movement both within the Jewish tradition and within the Roman Empire.

Within the Roman Empire, the Jewish people had lived as a conquered or occupied people. Many spent their lives as slaves, taken in battle. Roman procurators kept the peace and collected taxes, pocketing additional money for themselves. Roman leaders swung between tolerance of Jewish religious practices and persecution. Like the early Christians, Jews were tortured or put to death when they refused to worship pagan gods, or to worship the emperor as a God. In 70 CE the fall of the second temple in Jerusalem was the sad outcome of the Great Jewish Revolt against the Empire.

This time moving backwards to the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem under Babylonian rule was a time when the books we now think of as the Hebrew Bible were canonized and began to assume their present form. This was the time when classical Greek philosophy was thriving, and the Jews were known for the strong ethics of their legal code and tradition. The last books that made it into the canon were writings of the prophets like Ezekiel and Zacharia who spoke out against the injustices of the ruling class, and of their contemporary culture as a whole.

The chronicles of Jewish history that appear in the scriptures describe a struggle of kingdom against kingdom, of the rise and fall of powerful men. (This was a patriarchal time when women rarely had political power, and were not part of the Jewish Rabbinate.) The Indian Mahabharata tells similar story. The Hindu and Greek pantheons also reflect the role of war in Classical society. And so it was throughout the world, as the Chinese warred for dynastic control of China, and the Aztecs in this continent.

Writing was also a child of these civilizations, first in Sumer and later in Egypt peoples first wrote down their scared stories and texts. Classical religions such as Judaism brought sacred writing to the center of their religious identity.

But the earliest books of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures share oral roots with the stories of Islam. All 3 religions call themselves descendants of Abraham. The first five books of the bible, called the “Torah” collect stories of a very ancient oral tradition. 20th century feminist scholars have used the stories and descriptions of the life of women to help recreate a picture of what women’s lives might have been like. We notice the presence of deities like “the Queen of Heaven” in these biblical stories. Since women were not taught to read, and in many times and places worshiped separately from men, their stories and rituals would have been passed down orally and many were lost. Scholars like Marija Gimbutas have found evidence of a time before written history when women held power in politics and religion, when God was female.

Before the written record, before the lingering stories of ancient times, we have only the archeological record to help us understand what came before; the residual tools of a Neolithic village, the sediment of an evolving earth. Before people organized themselves and their farms around towns, were the Neolithic villages grown out of small settlements. Only about 1 million humans lived on earth. Archeological evidence of the first shrines and religious art shows us that religions focused on the cycle of life, the return of the sun after winter, harvest after planting. It was the role of early religions to pass on this cyclic wisdom, and to remind people of their place in the natural world. The Great mother deity gave birth to and cared for the universe.

These earliest peoples passed on to their offspring not only their genetic coding, but a cultural coding which preserved the learning of parent and grandparent for each evolving generation. Spoken language had made this possible in a new way.
As far back as our Neanderthal ancestors, ritual surrounded burial of the dead. Evidence of such a burial is found in an archeological site in Lebanon including a thoughtful arrangement of stones and a deer killed as food for the deceased. We identify with the drive of these early hominids to find meaning in the cycles of life and death, establishing traditions for integrating such experiences in their own lives and in the natural cycles of life.

Sometimes as a UU I feel like a newcomer in this valley, with all those new ideas our open minds have grasped. But we have roots here in this valley, going back over 200 years, before even the town of Sheshequin was incorporated in 1820. We have roots in this country going back to the American Revolution. We have roots back to the earliest leaders of the Christian Church – we were cutting edge thinkers (or heretics as Arius was called) back in the 3rd century. We have roots back to the ethical teachings of the Jewish traditions, and to the primal earth centered religions before history. We have roots that bind us to all beings who have ever wondered why we live and die.

We honor our roots today lest we become rootless and adrift, lest our UU tradition become cut off from the roots that bring us water and nutrients, lest our souls become deserts buffeted by the winds of change. Today, on Association Sunday, UUs from around the country gather to remember that despite our congregational polity, we voluntarily choose to join our resources, our hearts and mind together through Our UU Association.

Abundance Springs from Relationships (September 18, 2011)

2011-09-19T10:32:00.000-07:00

(This sermon is part of an ongoing series on the Principles of Permaculture)

Every year since I was an intern I have adopted 3-5 goals about how I can serve my congregation and how I can grow as a minister. Well, the year my son was born I was just starting my second year as a full time minister, and I figured “Time management” was going to be an important growing edge for me. I signed myself up for one of those fancy workshops from the Franklin Covey people at a hotel in San Francisco. It was called “First Things First” and that was really the gist of what they had to say; Figure out what are the most important things, and put those into your schedule first, so no matter what happens that day you can say “well, at least I got the most important thing done.” Well, then we spent a good deal of time talking about what is important. And right at the heart of what is important is cultivating and tending relationships. Each week they suggest you make a list of 7 relationships in your life, and what you need to do to cultivate and tend those relationships. Can you imagine a time management seminar telling you that sometimes it is more important to meet with a co-worker or go to your daughter’s little league game than to finish a report?

I think we at UUCAS understand in a real way the importance of relationships. It’s one of the best qualities of this community; we make building and nurturing our relationships to one another a priority. For example, we take time at the beginning of most of our committee meetings, whether as part of the formal agenda or as just something that happens informally before we begin, to “check in” with folks whom we know have been going through something rough, maybe because they mentioned it during Joys and Concerns. When take part in a program like Evensong it is because we want to take the time to get to know one another in a deep way, and to speak from the heart about what is really important to us.

But sometimes we forget the value and power of relationship when we get down to the work itself. We often say things like “it would be easier and simpler if I just did this myself” Easier than making those phone calls to see who else might want to get involved, easier than training someone to do something we already know how to do. I was meeting with a planning team from the Labor and Religion Coalition up in Ithaca recently. We talked about how we needed to grow our core working group, and get different faith traditions involved in this interfaith effort. We talked about events, and press releases, and articles for the web page in order to spread the word. Then I remembered the story of how I came to be part of that group. I was new in Ithaca, and did not yet have a job or friends or a permanent place to live. After a morning of sending out résumés, I started to search the web for “community organizing Ithaca After some dead ends I found a number to call, and reached a lovely woman named Edie who, it turns out, also happened to be UU. We talked for maybe half an hour on the phone, she asked me all kinds of good questions about myself, and told me about what her group was working on. When she invited me to their next meeting, I jumped at the chance. Now it was July, so as often happens at July meetings, only the 2 staff people and I had come to the meeting. We didn’t have a quorum to do business, so they gave me advice on where to look for Job postings in Ithaca, and got me caught up on their work as a committee. After hearing me talk about my passion for the environment, Edie told me she had a project she was working on doing interfaith organizing around global warming, and I jumped at the chance. To this day I am involved in both of those groups, and all because Edie took the time to build a relationship with me. Her kindness grew in two ways; she made a newcomer feel welcome, and because she took the time to get to know me, she understood what I had to give, what I WANTED to give to my new community.

Permaculture is like that. Take Chickens, for example. In the factory farm model, a chicken contributes eggs or meat. But a chicken is more than an egg laying machine. Chickens also like to scratch and peck. If you let them run around in an area you are cultivating, they will with their scratching and pecking clear the ground of weeds and pests for you just because it is in the nature of a chicken to do that. They will also, how shall we say this, turn their food into nutrient material to build up the soil. But if they are in a cage, they are frustrated and irritable that they can’t walk around and scratch, and now you have to clean up their poop. Conversely, if you allow the full complexity of the relationship between a chicken and her environment, there are myriad benefits for the farmer and for the farm. What else does a chicken do naturally? They eat bugs! And kitchen scraps! They are like a walking fast acting compost bin these guys. It turns out that if you put your green house on the south wall of your chicken coop, the body heat of the chickens helps keep the green house warm over night, and in the early morning when the greenhouse is gathering sun, it helps warm the chicken coop. Moreover, the carbon dioxide exhaled by the chickens as a delight to the plants in the green house. It seems like it would be simpler, easier, to put the chickens off by themselves somewhere and just bring them food and take away their waste, but the chickens are actually more productive, more helpful with the health of our whole garden if we give them the opportunity to be in relationship with our garden, with our orchard, with our greenhouse.

And there is one more thing that is important about these chickens. They are living beings. Permaculture has at its heart a life ethic. According to which recognizes “the intrinsic worth of every living thing.” Does that sound familiar? Look at the back of our order of service- the inherent worth and dignity of every living person. Permaculture takes this one step further, and extends it to every living thing. So a chicken doesn’t have to be productive to be valuable. It has some inherent worth just because it is a living being Says Mollison, one of the founders of permaculture “A tree is something of value in itself, even if it has no commercial value for us. That it is alive and functioning is what is important. It is doing its part in nature; recycling biomass, providing oxygen and carbon dioxide for the region, sheltering small animals, building soils, and so on.” I know that’s a pretty radical thing to say, that even though on the open market a farmer can sell that chicken for $.89 per pound it actually has more intrinsic worth than an iPod, even tough the iPod can be sold for more on e-bay.

Now think about the value of relationships in times of trouble. Remember everything we heard this morning and last Sunday in Joys and Concerns. Last Saturday when I came down with that gas pump to pump out the basement, after JC and Joan had gotten the generator going and hooked up work lights so we could see in the basement, they had taken the gas pump to help a neighbor pump out their home. There was a while when it was just me and Alexa and Morgan in the basement. Let me tell you I’d take Alexa and Morgan for my team any day of the week, but it was clear after a while running up and down those steps that this job was too big for us. And in come Carol and John. Boy was I glad to see them. And we worked for a while, but still it felt like a big job. The pulling into the parking lot come Doug and Susan with a carload of cleaning supplies. Now there’s a team shop-vacing and mopping the basement floor, a team running stuff up the stairs, a team cleaning and sanitizing and sorting the stuff that comes out of the basement, and a team out helping the neighbors. And just when we were feeling overwhelmed again,here come Jack and Diane. Katie and Aurelio and Chris call, they are at the airport and on their way. And it feels like we can do this. Eventually folks did getting tired, and we started to close up shop for the night, because we know when we come back on Sunday, there is a web of relationships that will carry us through this. And then.

And then folks are talking on Sunday morning, wondering “what more can we do for our neighbors” and suddenly there church is providing lunch and a place of respite for the whole neighborhood all this week. Diane will be the first to tell you that every step of the way there have been folks bringing donations, helping get the word out, making sandwiches. In a moment of scarcity-- no power, no clean water, for a while there no vehicles allowed into the area at all -- we are overwhelmed by the abundance springing from relationships.

Think about this like a garden. For example, over at West Haven Farm where I work, their onion bed is filled with flowers. Why flowers? Because they attract beneficial insects which protect the onions from pests. Marigolds help control eelworms that eat our tomatoes, and the chemicals they release into the soil deter weeds like bindweed (Permaculture in a Nutshell p. 24). A plant called Comfrey has also long been used as an herbal medicine for bone fractures. But it serves not only the health of the people who plant it but the garden as a whole, because Comfrey draws nutrients form the soil like potassium and when Comfrey returns to the garden as compost, or is left there to rot as mulch, it brings potassium to the other plants that need it. Moreover, when we mix flowers into our vegetable gardens, they look lovely. Maybe fewer people would hide their vegetable gardens behind their house if they were full of vibrant flowers. Maybe if our gardens were right between us and our driveway, we’d be more likely to notice the ripe zucchini on the way to the car, instead of noticing too late a fruit that has gone past its prime because we only trudge back to our vegetable gardens on Saturday. A row of onions alone is vulnerable to pests, and requires a lot of human intervention. But Permaculture suggests that when plants grow in balanced community, they support one another in subtle and complicated ways.

Think about all we experienced this past week. If Diane had shown up here all by herself with a pot of soup, would the same magic have been possible? If Joan had shown up here with her generator and shop lights and faced that basement alone, how quickly would she have become discouraged?

Now I know that relationships are anything but easy and simple. Were you ever introduced to someone whom you were going to “just love” because you were so much alike? It doesn’t always work out the way you want it to does it. I have more than once planted a flower that was supposed to repel snails only to see it eaten down to the ground within days. Relationships take work and patience and commitment. But this moment, right here, right now, is the best example I have ever known of a time when there is real scarcity and profound abundance. We only have to walk down Main Street to see that loss is real, that people have gone without power, without their own home, without a kitchen to cook in. Last week we saw bulldozers scooping out of the mud so many of their material possessions we spend a lifetime of work accumulating. It is becoming clear that some of these homes and businesses are never going to be what they were. And yet there is a hope in the air unpredicted by the destruction we see around us. Real abundance, the abundance of a community reaching out hearts and hands to one another, caring connections old and new are a lasting abundance that persists even when the flood waters have receded. True abundance springs from relationships.

Back to the Garden (September 11, 2011)

2011-09-11T14:11:00.000-07:00

When I was a teen-ager, my favorite thing in all the world was to hide out in my bedroom listening to albums on my turntable. Not so much of the rock and roll, but musical comedy and opera. One of my favorites was an opera by Leonard Bernstein called “Candide” based on the famous French novel by Voltaire. It’s the most cynical depiction of human nature that you can imagine in musical comedy form, yet at the end the ensemble unites in one of the most stirring moments from my massive record collection, singing

Let dreamers dream
What worlds they please
Those Edens can't be found.
The sweetest flowers,
The fairest trees
Are grown in solid ground.

We're neither pure, nor wise, nor good
We'll do the best we know.
We'll build our house and chop our wood
And make our garden grow...
And make our garden grow.

I hadn’t thought about that song in maybe 20 years, but this week the tune started to come back to me. I’ve always been a dreamer and an idealist, and by the time I went off to seminary and grappled with the big questions of life, I decided that the best single statement of truth was best found in the Beatles' song “All you need is love.” Being a dreamer and an idealist, so have often been disappointed in my life by the way things turn out. I experienced betrayal and loss as all people do, and the oppression of un-just systems. I realized that while this was Love is a good guiding principle in general, it must be grounded in the reality of our daily lives. When dreams are grounded in, well, solid ground, change happens.

This year the worship team has chosen to explore in a series of sermons the principles of permaculture. I’ll let the other members of the team speak for themselves about what this means to them, but to me this is the most hopeful vision I have to offer you- the fairest trees, the sweetest fruits are grown in solid ground. I think permaculture speaks to a deep and primal dream- the return to the fair garden where things grow in harmony.

The story of Genesis in the Hebrew scriptures was written probably 5 or 600 years BC, but I was taught that these stories were from an oral tradition that had been passed on through story telling long before that. UUs tend to look at this story not as a historical fact, but as an archetypal story that has spoken to many peoples over thousands of years, and to me, today, it speaks of an ecological system in harmony, where all the beings in the system, including humans, have enough to eat, and can co-exist in peaceful cooperation with one another. Oh, and it’s not too much work, things just kind of grow and are fruitful and self regenerating.

In our Unitarian Universalist history we have often worked to create a more just and compassionate world. In our old statement of belief the (The Washington Declaration of 1935) “we avow our faith in … the power of men of good-will and sacrificial spirit to overcome evil and progressively establish the Kingdom of God.” I’ve always had trouble with that phrase, but back in seminary a friend of mine said she preferred the “kin-dom of God” because it expressed a more egalitarian sense of our vision, of what we were working to accomplish with our lives as individuals as a church community, and as a movement. I think of the Kingdom of God in our Universalist statement of belief not as a heaven with pearly streets, nor as a time in the future when life will be perfect, but as a vision of what could be that guides us in the right direction, that gives us something to work toward. I think we still need that hopeful vision today. A guiding vision of what this world would look like if it were imbued with fairness and balance. Instead of a kingdom, I propose a garden.

To describe this garden I’m imagining, I need to talk first about systems. A System is a “set of interacting or interdependent components forming an integrated whole. ” Like the human body, or a society, or a garden. This is a way of looking at the world developed by a German Biologist in the mid-twentieth century who was trying to address the fragmented way science looks at things, dividing them neatly between specialties. He was trying to integrate all the scientific disciples, both natural (like biology and physics) and social (like psychology and sociology). It turns out that there are a number of things that all systems have in common, enough to really change how we look at the world. Because this disciple was seeking for the ways different systems are a like, it has raised some wonderful new questions like “how is a farm like a forest” and “how is a church community like a living being.”

This year as we look at principles of permaculture, we are not just looking at tips for gardeners, we are laying out a holistic map of principles or paths that will tend to get us closer to integrated healthy productive systems in balance, back to the garden. I propose that the Eden of our imaginations is actually a vision of a system in balance. As integral parts of many systems ourselves, we are hardwired to long for homeostasis, to long for a system in balance. Because by any account we are out of balance. And the culture we are living in is not sustainable- we all know this not only because we watch the news but because as living beings we know what balance looks like, we know what sustainability looks like, and this isn’t it.

In this very discouraging time, Permaculture offers a source of hope. The permaculture movement was begun in the early 1970s by two Australians: David Holmgren and Bill Mollison They were disturbed one the issues we have been talking about here in this congregation for the past few years; the way contemporary agriculture is practiced is not sustainable- it uses up top soil and fossil fuels with no thought for the future. Permaculture comes from the words “permanent” and “agriculture” Holmgren wrtires that “The idea which initiated permaculture was the forest as a model for agriculture”, since forests are self-sustaining systems teeming with life.

But Mollison and Holmgren they started to work with these ideas, they realized that the problem was bigger than agriculture, for example even the oil industry agrees that we are due to see an irreversible decline world oil production in the next couple of decades. So they enlarged the scope of their vision to be “Permanent Culture” Permaculture. Sustainable culture. A system where what is coming in is in balance with what is going out. This holistic way of looking at problems and solutions has at its core 3 values: Care for the Earth, (the soil, forests and water) Care for People (our selves, kin and community) , and Fair Share (setting limits to consumption and reproduction, and redistributing the surplus). Because we are part of something larger than ourselves, part of a living system, and therefore it is foolish to think that we ourselves could be self sustaining if we as a global economy are running out of topsoil and fossil fuel.

In this pursuit of a balanced sustainable system, the garden itself will be our teacher. Nature has tremendous wisdom about creating balanced sustainable systems or we ourselves would not be here on this planet. And nature generally tends towards that balance, but nature takes thousands or millions of years sometimes to achieve that balance, and while I have no doubt that my backyard garden will come into ecological harmony if left to its own devices for a decade or two, we are builders and creators. It says in the genesis story that we were put in the garden “to till and to keep it.” That’s who we are, it’s in our nature. This summer I spent as much time as possible in Lake Cayuga. And on the shore there was always a child or two moving around piles of earth and stones. Is there anyone else here who’s ever built something on the beach? It’s almost instinctual for us I think. And anyone who has ever built a sand castle remembers the first time that big wave comes and washes it all away. Oh the humanity! So the next time we build our sand castle maybe we build it further inland, or maybe we build channels for the water to flow so that our castle now has a moat for the tide to flow into instead of just knocking down our castle right away. Or maybe we build a bigger higher castle, with big rocks cause darn it that ocean is not going to stop me building my castle where I want to build it. Permaculture is a school of study that says “you know what? You are never going to stop the tide from coming in, build your sand castle accordingly.”

Our next step when we are building the sand castle is to look around the shoreline to see what nature has done over the past thousand years or so about this whole problem of building near a body of water. WE use nature’s wisdom as a model. This is called “bio-mimicry” It is the hopeful idea that solutions for many of our challenges are already out there in the world. We don’t have to invent a better pesticide- that’s what bats are for. We create solutions that work with nature like a partner, a teacher, a collaborator instead of as a foe to be vanquished and overcome. When we work against nature, we waste time and money. My favorite example, and one I fall into myself, is how every fall we rake up leaves, bagging them up and hauling them off to the dump, then purchasing fertilizer or compost or mulch to replenish our gardens. Permaculture notices that in a forest, no one hauls out the leaves, and no one has to haul in fertilizer. It proposes that if we look to the forest as a teacher we see that perhaps we are wasting not only our time and energy, but the fuel to power the trucks and the financial and environmental costs of hauling it away, the financial and environmental costs fertilizing. Nature has been working on this problem for millions of years- the answer is to use waste as food. The leaves don’t need to be outputs that leave our garden, they can be used right where they fall, or moved to a part of our garden that needs that can use those dead leafs for nourishment.

The most important aspect of permaculture is that we have to look at the garden, the system as a whole- as an interconnected web of life of which we are all a part. If we don’t take the time to time to think of the whole community, the whole ecosystem, the whole culture, then we are like a kid playing whack-a-mole, plug a hole here and the problem pops up someplace else.

Last spring I went to the Rowe Retreat center for the first time to attend a weekend long workshop by my favorite Witch and activist Starhawk. Her topic was “Principles of true abundance.” These can be scary times we are living in; when we lose a job or find our retirement savings plummeting in value with the stock market it is hard to see our world as abundant. It is easy for us to tie abundance to money, and feel insecure and powerless. But true abundance comes from a system in balance, when inputs balance outputs. Remember Ben Franklin said “a penny saved is a penny earned?” Well many are starting to realize that a penny saved is better than a penny earned, because you didn’t have to exert that energy earning it in the first place.

It turns out that her principles of abundance were also the principles of permaculture, counseling us to look in new places for abundance, like our relationships, like the web of life of which we are a part, like the trash heap, like our ancestors, or our diversity. In this time of imbalance and scarcity, we need to know where abundance truly lies. So this year our worship team will be exploring 8 principles of abundance, principles of a sustainable and balanced culture. What makes these permaculture principles relevant for us as a faith community is that they are rooted not only in the pagan tradition, of which Starhawk is a leader, but also in the humanist tradition which honors science, reason and the direct observation of truth in the world, and it also links to this ancient Judeo-Christian tradition of a garden where the fruit trees grow, where all live in balance and harmony.

As Unitarian Universalists, we already are committed to affirm and promote a respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. I think we need to take that one step further- we need to be committed to bring the web back into balance, a sustainable balance for the natural and human worlds alike (knowing how intimately those worlds, those systems are interdependent), and as Universalists who believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every person, I think we can commit to sharing fairly among all those with whom we share this earth. Way back in 1887 Unitarian minister William Channing Gannett declared: "We believe that we ought to join hands and work to make the good things better and the worst good, counting nothing good for self that is not good for all.”

This is a hopeful vision: a world in balance, a garden where the leaves that fall from a tree become food for new growth, where apples from the tree feed the gardeners and the canopy of the tree provides shelter from sun and wind for creatures and people alike. This vision will be our guiding star, and though we may never reach it except in part, it will lead us in a worthy direction. As our map to lead us there we will use these principles, and I challenge each of us to apply the principles not as a set of directions but as is uniquely appropriate in our own daily lives, in our own corner of the earth. I challenge each of us to think of ourselves not as isolated individuals, but as part of something larger than ourselves, part of countless interlocking systems. I challenge each of us to notice what works and what doesn’t work as we move through this year, and so to add to the wisdom of our tradition. Because a vision is only useful, in direct relationship to what grows from the springs from the ground to which we ourselves are connected. A vision is only powerful if it makes our garden grow.

Finding our Place at the Table (August 21, 2011)

2011-08-22T14:12:00.000-07:00

When this Universalist Church was built some 200 years ago, those men and women knew that they were Christian. The first Universalist articles of faith in 1790 said in part:

We believe that there is One Mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ, in whom dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; who, by giving himself a ransom for all, hath redeemed them to God by his blood; and who, by the merit of his death, and the efficacy of his Spirit, will finally restore the whole human race to happiness.

To our 21st century Unitarian Universalist ears that may sound pretty orthodox. But if you read carefully, you can see the Universalist heresy it contains- that Jesus gave his ransom for ALL, not just for an elect few, and that his Spirit will “Finally restore the whole human race to happiness” Even in this day and age that’s a very important idea- that no one will be “left behind” – that eventually we will all, every human person, be restored. This will happen, our Universalist forbearers believed, through the efficacy, the power of Jesus’ spirit. Jesus has the power to restore every last person to happiness. WE will be saved not through our own power, not through our good works and righteous living, but through the power of His spirit. Good works were important to those earliest Universalists, but it was not through our works we were saved, but through the power of Jesus’ Spirit, and God’s “infinite, adorable, incomprehensible and unchangeable Love”.

Even in the early 20th century, I am sure that the Universalists who sat and worshiped in these historic pews knew themselves to be Christians. You will find inside the front cover of many of the old blue hymnals here an affirmation of faith-

Avowal of Faith:
We avow our faith
in God as eternal and all-conquering love;
In the spiritual leadership of Jesus;
In the supreme worth of every human personality;
In the authority of truth known or to be known:
And in the power of men of goodwill and sacrificial spirit to overcome all evil and progressively establish the kingdom of God.

But notice that the role of Jesus changes in this 20th century avowal. Gone are the words “in whom dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily who, by giving himself a ransom for all, hath redeemed them to God by his blood;” Gone from our avowal of faith is any discussion of the metaphysics of the nature of God and Jesus, and the miraculous nature of Jesus sacrifice on the cross. Now, here in the early 20th century Jesus is a spiritual leader, and what interested Universalists and Unitarians were his humanity and his teachings.

And so it is for many 21st century Unitarian Universalists- Jesus is an important teacher and spiritual leader. He taught us compassion for “the least of these” as he reached out to lepers and others at the margins of society. He taught us to respond to violence with nonviolence by “turning the other cheek” He taught us about community organizing, and speaking out against corruption, as he overturned the tables of the moneychangers in the synagogue. He taught us to love our neighbors as ourselves.

About 20% Unitarian Universalists think of themselves as Christian today. The UU Christian Fellowship was founded in 1945 to continue Christian scholarship and to sustain this important tradition in our movement. But I want to challenge the other 80% of us to remember that Jesus is an important part of our religious heritage, and postulate that all of us can learn something from Jesus the teacher, the spiritual leader. This is particularly challenging for those who grew up in a Christian church and left that faith because in some way it was not a good fit. Perhaps some sadness or resentment lingers, and it is hard to look at the teachings of Jesus with fresh eyes. But this is also part of our UU tradition- to look at old traditions anew, with open hearts and minds. My own spiritual director once told me that sometimes when we come up against a religious story or teaching that is uncomfortable, this is when the most insight, the greatest transformation is available to us.

I think the same is true of the traditional communion ritual. For those of us who are Christian, as for those of us who have no history with the communion ritual, it is easy to open our hearts and minds. But if we have a difficult history or conflicted feelings, or if we don’t understand ourselves to be followers of Jesus, the ritual of Communion raises difficult questions. We may ask ourselves “given my doubts, given my history, given my beliefs, is there a place for me at the communion table?”

When I was a child growing up in a UU church, my 8th grade class studied Neighboring Faiths just as the UUCAS Teen class did last year. I remember how empowering it was to go into a completely foreign religious community, like the Greek Orthodox Church, prepared by our teachers and surround by other kids my age. We were greeted by a leader in the church who welcomed us, showed us to our special spot in the balcony, and could answer questions. “Can we take communion?” one classmate asked. His answer, “anyone who has been baptized can take communion here” left us with even more questions like “does a UU dedication count as a baptism for purposes of taking communion? We decided it probably didn’t.

I nervously asked the same question at a Catholic Mass I attended with my roommate in college. She replied "Oh, no. Even if you are Catholic you can't take communion unless you've been confessed,” and sure enough as I looked around I saw almost 30% of the congregation remain in their seats as others formed lines in the aisle to receive the host. But later that year, when I attend a Presbyterian service with a friend in her tiny old white steepled church, she looked amazed that I would even ask. "How could we turn anyone away from God's table" she responded, and so as the basket of rough cubed bread passed hand to hand, I took a piece and ate.

In her article “Food as Sacrament” UU Christian Rev. Wendy L Bell writes that “While early New England Protestants usually insisted that only members could take communion, and only so-called “worthy” ones at that, our Universalist forebears began insisting in the 1780s that the Lord’s Supper should be open to everyone who wished to take it.” (p. 87)

Ours is a Universalist communion. All are welcome at this table. Whether or not you are Christian. Whether or not you are Unitarian Universalist. For some folks it will be a reminder of that last supper when Jesus said to his followers “take this and eat it in remembrance of me” for others the essential symbol of the communion is that by sharing this loaf of bread, we remember that we are connected through this community. At its root, the word Communion just means a sharing- we share this bread and juice as we share our lives together in community.

Today we celebrate this historic ritual, in our historic church building. We use the same chalice and cups that Universalists have used in this space for decades. The words of the service are ours too. The liturgy we will follow (it’s that insert in your order of service) is based on a worship held by the UU Christian Fellowship at the 2010 General Assembly. These words come from our new hymnal- “Singing the Living Tradition” and from a very old hymnal- the “red hymnal” called “Hymns of the Spirit.” Whether you think of yourself as Christian or Jewish, or Pagan or Humanist, our Universalist faith is big enough to hold us all. And so I invite everyone to find a place at this communion table today.

Washing the Dishes (June 5, 2011)

2011-06-10T12:57:00.000-07:00

One summer at the UU church I served in Palo Alto, our RE team decided that over the summer we would offer a pilot session of SpiritPlay- the UU adaptation of the Montessori-based “Godly Play” developed by one of my heroes Jerome Berryman. My co-teachers and I were all a little daunted by the amount of prep and set-up required; the idea is that there is a “prepared room” so that the children are empowered to find what they need to do their work. This means there’s a huge amount of preparation need for the first class, but then little changes from week to week except the story. The teacher also has to be “prepared”. There are certain phrases that are used, places to be, hand gestures and ways of handling conflict that are particular to this method. There’s a way everything is to be done, to help give the children a sense of mastery. Because really the lesson plan, like most CRE classes, is just story, discussion, craft and snack. What makes SpiritPlay different is that we were trying to create a scared space where children could engage directly with religious language. It is based on the radical assumption that all humans are engaging their existential reality no mater what their age. And so after the story each week the students choose the work they will do. It might be painting, or drawing, or shaping clay, or re-telling the story for themselves.

One of the core concepts behind Montessori is that if children have equipment matched to their size and capabilities, they will really develop a sense of their own capacity. I had thought the long descriptions of clean-up supplies present in the Montessori classroom to help children take care of their own spills seemed really tedious and complex, and I was willing to let it go. But at the last minute of that first morning we made a quick run to the kitchen for buckets and sponges and were back in time for the children to enter. And so that first morning the children did more-or-less engage with me in a quiet wondering space. I was touched and delighted each time they were willing to play along. After the story each child went to find their work for the first time, and the two youngest children chose paint. They got out their special paint tray and paints and paper, and in about 2 minutes they were done painting. Oh my, I thought, I hope they will be able to “find their work” today. But before they moved on to their next choice, they needed to clean up after their painting. I showed them where we kept the bins of water and the sponges cut small for individual use. Twenty minutes later when I called everyone back to the circle those two were still cleaning their trays. For those young children, this was clearly the best fun of the whole morning. How fun to have your own sponge in a bucket marked “trays” to clean off your tray. How fun to have a special bucket marked “hands” to wash your hands in.

Think about it pedagogically- Berryman’s idea is that each of us knows somewhere deep inside what our spiritual work is on any given morning. This theory places a radical trust in the spirit’s capacity to be heard, and in our capacity to hear it. And this capacity is not dependant on physical or mental maturity; Berryman is making the radical leap that we are all engaged in our spiritual work our whole lives, not once we get some degree, or go on a meditation retreat with some guru. We don’t always know what our work is, so we set aside time to see what emerges, trusting that this will be our work. And these youngest children figured out that the work of their spirit that day was to wash those paint trays in bins of soapy water with their very own sponge.

I told this story a number of times when folks asked how SpiritPlay was going. I found myself saying “maybe the Buddhists were right- maybe it is all about washing the dishes.” It came out in a kind of glib way, but the idea sank deeper and deeper in me over the following weeks and years. Maybe the spiritual work of washing the dishes is really important and powerful and even compelling. Maybe it really is all about washing the dishes.

Let me back up and say that I had first been exposed to Thich Nhat Hanh’s writing about mindfulness maybe a decade before that fateful morning with the paint trays. I was in seminary at the time and I had the frame of mind that I was really living only when I was doing something interesting or fun or exciting- and that the chores I had to do were the cost I had to pay to have my real life. Dishes and other chores were something you should put off doing as long as possible, then rush through as quickly as possible to get back to really living. But in my Intro to Buddhist meditation class, we were learning that we should always put our attention in to the present moment, no matter what that might involve. Whether we were sitting quietly on a meditation mat, or stuck in traffic, we could practice equanimity, and being fully present in the moment.
Well, I tried- honestly I did. And when you live in the bay area, there are plenty of moments to sit patiently in traffic practicing your equanimity. But somewhere inside I was still doing this because I was preparing or getting ready for some later outcome. I was motivated by the idea that if you really practice being present as often as possible, then when some great moment of spiritual revelation comes, you could be as fully present to that as to the bumper of the car in front of you on the interstate. I would struggle with doing the dishes to do the dishes so that later I could drink tea to drink tea, as it were. And maybe that was my work. I was a student after all, and after many very studious and introverted years at music school, I am so grateful that I had adventures and did interesting things in my twenties- I’m glad I had passionate ideas about changing the world, and a deep hunger for spiritual awakening and growth.

Then, about the time I was settled in my first full time ministry, I had my son. I remember one Sunday afternoon standing in the living room after a full day at church, and my family was all watching a football game and relaxing. “Why don’t you sit down and relax?” someone said. I wondered, “why don’t I?” And then I heard the sound of my infant son waking from an all-too-short nap in his room. Now parenting an infant is a very rigorous time of life. You are never really in control of your own schedule. There is no putting off your work for later. And when you are the parent of a toddler, there is no rushing through things as quickly as possible. Toddlers do everything in their own time and are rushed at your peril. It’s not unusual to spent half an hour getting a child into his or her shoes. So if you are really living only when you are on some grand adventure, or having fun with your friends, or pursuing some scholarly or spiritual insight, this is a time of life when you are not really living.

But the wisdom of the Buddhist tradition challenges us to set aside those assumptions. The time you are stuck in traffic or stuck at the sink with a pile of dishes, this is still your time. This is still living. In fact, for most of us this is the very fabric of our days. What a waste it would be if all our long day of chores and work and helping others were all in preparation for that hour after dinner when all the dishes are done and we relax with family or with a good book, or have a quiet walk alone.

Moreover, there is something really satisfying about work done well. There is something almost restful about washing dishes, or sweeping, or pulling weeds because the mind can let go of all its cares and worries, can put aside planning for the future and just sink down deeply into the task at hand. When I sit in front of the computer answering e-mail I usually feel kind of scattered by the time I finish, and finish is such an arbitrary word for it since there is always more to do. But when I set out to wash a load of dishes it has a definite beginning, middle and end, and when I am done I have something aesthetically pleasing to show for my work- a clean kitchen that I can enjoy and use. I may feel tired after doing the dishes or weeding the garden, but my mind is almost always more clear and calm when I am done if I am doing the dishes to do the dishes, than if I am rushing through to get to the next thing on my list.

As pretty much every healing discipline agrees, doing things with our body is good. Being a little tired from activity is a good thing. I used to lace on my running shoes and go for a run first thing out of bed in the morning, but now that I have to get my son to elementary school, after I make my son’s breakfast and lunch and feed the dogs and let them out and set the coffee to perking, I like to do a load of dishes or a load of laundry. It has a very similar effect to going for a run -- I’m awake, I’ve used my body to start the day and I feel ready to go. I think this is how you know you are in mid-life; when doing a few chores before breakfast seems like a nice way to start the day.

I want to beyond a strictly Buddhist concept of mindfulness for a moment and think about work itself. Especially the kind of every day tasks we do with our hands, with our bodies. The last half century or so has been filled with “labor saving” devices, tools and machines. And yet are folks less busy than they were half a century ago? Do we have more time to go on walks and sit quietly and read a book? I don’t think we do. Our whole society is guided by the idea of doing the dishes to get done as quickly as possible so that we can go watch TV or something. James Bostic, former deputy assistant secretary of agriculture for rural development once said “But just stop for a minute and think about what it means to live in a land where 95 percent of the people can be freed form the drudgery of preparing their own food.” To this Wendell Berry replied in his book The unsettling of America:
“In gardening, … one works with the body to feed the body. The work, if it is knowledgeable, makes for excellent food. And it makes one hungry. The work makes eating both nourishing and joyful, not consumptive and keeps the eater from getting fat and weak. This is health, wholeness, and a source of delight. …

The ‘drudgery’ of growing one’s own food, then, is not drudgery at all… It is – in addition to being the appropriate fulfillment of a practical need – a sacrament, as eating is also, by which we enact and understand our oneness with the creation, the conviviality of one body with all bodies…”

“The former deputy assistant secretary cannot see work as a vital connection; he can see it only as a trade of time for money, and so of course he believes in doing as little of it as possible, especially if it involves the use of the body.” [Berry p. 138-9]

I agree with Berry that eating becomes more meaningful when we have prepared the food ourselves. The only time my son has ever eaten certain vegetables is when he harvested them off the vine, or helped cook them up in a stir fry. And so it is with washing the dishes. To really feel the dish under your hands, the temperature of the water, the smell of the soap. How different each kind of food is to clean off a dish. How different it is to clean a fork than to clean a mug. I tell you I am much more careful when I cook certain foods knowing how hard it is to clean the pan if I scorch it. When we feel the full cycle of food, or of a dish from cupboard, to table, to sink, to cupboard again, we know something real about what it means to live in this world. If we only ever experience the cupboard full of clean cups, our knowing is superficial.

A few weeks ago I mentioned one of my most deeply held beliefs -- that if anything is sacred, then everything is sacred. If any work is sacred, then washing the dishes is surely sacred. Whatever your work is this week, whether you are called to it by the spirit, or called by the pragmatic needs of living in the world, I challenge you not to rush through it to get back your real life, but to Cherish your time washing the dishes, to claim it as your life. Any time you find yourself facing the day’s chores: washing dishes, mowing the lawn, getting a cup of juice for a child, walking to the mailbox. I encourage you to sink down into it, to experience it fully. It is the very fabric of our lives.

Our Golden Anniversary or “Transient and permanent in Untarian Universalism” (May 15, 2011)

2011-05-16T13:10:00.000-07:00

In 1841 Unitarian Minister Rev. Theodore Parker gave a famous sermon called “A Discourse on the Transient and Permanent in Christianity” that made him very popular with the young upstarts, and reviled by the old establishment. But it is such an important sermon that UU seminary students are still required to read it today. Parker believed that there were some parts of Christianity, like “forms and doctrines” that were transient, that would change over the life of the church. But there were other parts of Christianity like “the divine life of the soul, love to God, and love to man” that would persist through the changes of time and culture.
“Already men of the same sect eye one another with suspicion, and lowering brows that indicate a storm, and, like children who have fallen out in their play, call hard names. Now, as always, there is a collision between these two elements. The question puts itself to each man, “Will you cling to what is perishing, or embrace what is eternal? This question each must answer for himself. (pp. 146-147)”

Today we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Unitarian Universalism, of the merger of 2 historic traditions. And as we do so I invite us to consider where we have been and where we are going; What is transient and what is permanent in our faith, now called Unitarian Universalism?

When the Unitarian association and the Universalist Associate merged in 1961, no one knew for sure what would happen. It’s true that if you made a theological continuum of all the protestant churches U and U often found themselves standing next to one another. But the two churches were different in important ways. There had been talk of union since 1865 but these differences had always held us apart in the past.

One of the most acute differences over the years is our relationship to Christianity. The founders of both movements understood themselves to be Christians, though many in the more mainstream traditions found there ideas so heretical that they were often accused of not being true Christians. Remember the Universalists were, at the time of their emergence, Trinitarians. They had no problem with the orthodox understandings of God, only an irreconcilable difficulty with the belief that an loving, all-powerful God would predestine eternal punishment for most of humanity. It was a different orthodoxy that distinguished the Unitarians. You may remember form earlier this year we talked about Joseph priestly who, way back in the 1700s, argued for the idea that Jesus was fully human, and that Jesus’ divinity had only been thought up in the 3rd century- long after Jesus lived and taught. The Unitarians had long believed that the humanity of Jesus was important, and that his divinity was less important than his teachings. Unitarians like Parker were already suggesting over 100 years ago that you could be a Christian without believing in miracles.

By the 1930s, humanism was an important part of both traditions, but was much more widespread among the Unitarians. (When the Humanist manifesto was signed in 15 of 34 signers were Unitarian). We oversimplify history when we portray Universalist Christians in conflict with Unitarian Humanists, because there were Christians and Humanists in both movements. The tension between more orthodox Christians and the swelling ranks of humanists begged the question -could the new merged association make room for both? Moreover, some folks felt that to be truly “Universalist” we needed to go beyond just the wisdom of the Christian tradition, to “the universal truths taught by the great prophets and teachers of humanity in every age and tradition” -- to a truly universal religion.

In 1959, the General Assembly of the two associations met in Syracuse New York. 1000 delegates were there. The Joint Merger Commission had spent 5 years seeking out the perspectives of UU congregations around the country. The Secretary of the Merger Commission said “it is safe to say that our societies have never responded in such numbers and with such seriousness as they did to the subject of merger.” In fact the merger was ultimately approved by a plebiscite representing 94 percent of Unitarian societies and 95 percent of Universalist societies. The Merger Commission worked for 5 years to prepare hundreds of pages of reports and study guides, and a 44 page "The Plan to Consolidate the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of America" also called “the blue book” by the delegates who carried it throughout the Assembly.

One part of the plan proved to be most contentions. The new organization would need a statement of the “purposes and objectives” that could guide their new consolidated association. The commission had proposed this statement: “To cherish and spread the universal truths taught by the great prophets and teachers of humanity in every age and tradition, immemorially summarized in their essence as love to God and love to man.” The Universalists passed it in their first vote, but the Unitarian assembly had intense debate. Some folks thought it was too creed-like, but others wondered why it didn’t mention Jesus or our Judeo-Christian Heritage. The Unitarians countered with this: “To cherish and spread the universal truths taught by Jesus and the other great teachers of humanity in every age and tradition, and prophetically expressed in the Judeo-Christian tradition as love to God and love to man.” But this also couldn’t pass a vote on the Unitarian side, who felt like it stated too strongly our relationship to Christianity. Debate over wording of this statement created so much tension among the ranks, that it almost derailed the whole merger. Delegates debated late into the night, not wanting to give up, but not able to find something they could agree on, until finally they changed one word; our Judeo-Christian heritage” was changed to “the Judeo-Christian heritage.” Finally this statement could be approved by a majority of delegates.

A second area of concern was whether the smaller Universalist Church of America would loose itself in the larger American Unitarian Association. Would folks get lazy and say “Unitarian” instead of “Unitarian Universalist”? Would the Universalists lose their own unique history and identity? As a Unitarian Universalist congregation that was a Universalist congregation for its first 150 years, this is an important question for us. As we move into the future it is important that we, as a historic Universalist congregation, take a leadership role in preserving and uplifting our history. One way the Universalists hung onto their identity was by preserving our state conventions. If I understand correctly, before merger the Universalists also had one general association, but most of the decisions and power were in their state conventions, while the Unitarians had a more congregational polity. My favorite illustration of this is one Ginna gave me. In 1891 Rev. R. Neale was contracted by PUC to preach at Athens Church for 3 months, but the rule was that you must be in fellowship in Universalist tradition to serve a Universalist church. The PUC gave Rev. Neale 3 months to get into fellowship. So Rev. Neale applies for fellowship, but when the PUC convenes in Athens, perhaps in this very building, he does not attend but sends his lawyer to the hearing. As you might expect, his application for fellowship is rejected, and because there is NOT congregational polity-- that is the right of congregations to chose their own ministers-- the PUC closes the church, doors barricaded. A new board of the Athens church is elected, reengaging Mr. Neale who broke in through window, and started conducting services again. It is because he was “Enjoined in court of law” that we know this story at all- since it was reported in the news in the “Term of Court” blotter, wherein it quips that no word was give on the “spiritual fitness” of the lawyer. Now, post merger, the PUC does not have the power to give fellowship to ministers, but it does us stay connected to our Universalist roots, and the endowment of the PUC helps keep some of these historic Universalist churches alive.

Both denominations were active in social justice, and believed this to be an important part of their faith. Perhaps you remember that the first Universalist Minister, Olympia Brown, was also a tireless voice of women’s suffrage. Or Unitarian Dorothea Dix whose reporting on our treatment of the mentally ill lead to important reforms in the mid 1800s. Each denomination had their own service committee formed in the 1930s to witness against the Nazi invasions in Europe and to help refugees. And in fact the two worked closely together throughout their history and seemed to easily merge in 1963.. IN fact, it was in part their history of working together and being of similar mind about Social Justice work that was one of the cornerstones that made consolidation seem possible. But while Unitarians and Universalists were marching in Selma and Washington in the 1950s and 19602, the 1963 GA in Chicago failed to pass a non-discrimination clause. In 1969, just 8 years after merger, the Black Empowerment controversy erupted, marked at one dramatic moment by a walkout of our General Assembly. We came to realize that we had not even begun to address systemic racism and oppression in our own institutions. And so over the past few decades we have begun to take a hard look at our own institutions and to do the work of countering oppressions, but if this is work we really hope to do in a serious way, it is work that we must commit to into the future.

As in the larger culture, the black power movement empowered not only people of color but also women and GLBT persons to claim their power in this democratic country and within our movement. Senior ministers can still recall a time when there was not a single woman in our St. Lawrence District chapter of the Minister’s association, but now more than half of all ministers in our denomination today are women. Before merger all our GLBT clergy were closeted, and now our queer clergy and layfolks are at the heart of our movement- and at the heart of our “Standing on the Side of Love” campaign. We are chagrined to hear about the difficulty ministers from traditionally marginalized groups faced when looking for a congregation (and we have to assume that lay folks looking for welcoming congregations experienced the same barriers). But we have tried to look honestly at the structures of power and oppression, and we have committed ourselves to a path of change. We now require, for example, all congregations to participate in “Beyond Categorical Thinking” when they are in search. Starr King School for the Ministry, one of our 2 UU seminaries, includes as part of its core curriculum “Educating to Counter Oppressions.” As a movement we have begun to wake up to the realities of racism and overlapping oppressions, and have faith that we can change- that these institutional oppressions will be part of the “transient” in our movement.

IN the Commission on Appraisals report I mentioned before, they noticed a trend that folks want more heart than head from their churches in the last half of the 20th centuries. The Culture of the 1960s and 1970s changed our movement deeply. A new generation put aside study groups for encounter groups, and something stuck. On some fundamental way, what we wanted from our congregations changed from what our grandparents wanted. We want to feel connected to one another, we want chances to relate deeply in a way that, according to that report, is a change for who we are as a movement. That old old idea of an all-loving god may be better expressed in this time not as an important idea that can be argued by quick tongues and minds, but as a way for us to be in the world.

Universalists were at one time the 6th largest denomination in the country. We can see that here in the valley where there were at one time 7 Universalist congregations in the North Branch. Both the Unitarian and Universalist movements had shrunk over the years, as had many main line denominations. In the Commission on Appraisals report: “The Unitarian Universalist Merger 1961-1975” in 1975, there was already a perception that the great hopes of growth after merger were slowed by outside forces including this decentralization of church in our culture, and also that our cutting edge liberal ideas were no longer so cutting edge –that is to say that when our ideas became mainstream, one no longer had to take sanctuary in our congregations to hear our good news. Whereas at many points in our history we have had great clarity about who we were as a faith tradition, the changes to our movement and to the world over this past century have forced us to ask ourselves “What is transient and what is permanent in Unitarian Universalism.” The question we have been asking ourselves for over 50 years is “who are we?” and “what next?” what is the special calling of this faith tradition.

This fall you all sent me to the CENTER for Excellence in Ministry, and one of our presenters, Beth Zemsky, said during a panel discussion, that what she saw next not only for our movement, but for our culture as a whole, emerging in response to the rhetoric of individualism and security which has dominated our public discourse for the past decades, is a focus on interconnection and interdependence. As she spoke those words, I realized that actually, we’ve been talking around this for a while, about our interconnection and interdependence. I’ve heard us described over the past few decades as a “queer theology” that is to say not a theology for folks who are queer, but a theology which “goes both ways” as it were. I’ve heard us described as a cross-roads religion. And we covenant to affirm and promote respect for the interdependent web, added to our principles only 25 years ago. We have known for a long time that our culture is out of balance in its pursuit of individual liberty. And I think of that night 50-some years ago when in the middle of what was probably unprecedented theological diversity, those 1000 delegates staid up deep into the night because they had faith that there was a way to stay connected while being authentic to individual difference and to our multiplicity. Think about the hateful horrible things we hear folks say in the media about other folks, folks who are different from them. This world needs us, Unitarian Universalists, to hang fast to our interdependence web, and to help others see it too. We must share the good news of our interconnection with those who don’t recognize how inextricably wound up in it we all are.

So when I ask myself what will remain at the core of Unitarian Universalism, what is transient and what is permanent, I think of our radical respect for our interdependence. I also think about our roots --hose roots going back hundreds of years, and our heroes who held for their contemporaries and for the future the light of reason, who were not afraid to speak their truth even when it meant personal sacrifice. And I think of our love of justice, and our deep roots in working for justice for more than a century. And now we bind our love of justice into that web- a web of intersecting identities, or staggering diversity -- knowing that this will not be a truly just world until there is justice for everyone in that web. We start with ourselves, our own association, our own congregation, our own hearts. And we express that web each Sunday when we gather in community. It is no longer enough for us to speak the truth to one another, we crave that interconnection. We practice love here in this place, not only because we have an innate longing for connection, but also because we believe that by practicing love, we help to create the world we dream of. When forms and doctrines fade away, I have faith that the good news we have to share about the love to the transcendent, love to one another, and love to this great web of life of which we are a part, these will never fade.

The Dirt Beneath Our Feet (May 1, 2011)

2011-05-10T11:19:00.001-07:00

I guess you could say that I’m an agnostic –there’s nothing that I know for sure about God. But at some point I made a theological leap that if I was going to believe in God, the God I could believe in was not separate from the world, but was deeply immanent in the world. If there was anything that was sacred, then everything was sacred. It is not enough simply to make that theological pronouncement, however, because such an audacious statement calls me to look deeply at all these manifold sacred things. Each living thing is a sacred text, and like the great sacred texts, new wisdom emerges as you live with those texts. What has surprised me in the years since I made that leap is that Once you put on your “everything is sacred glasses,” that is once you look at things as if you believe and trust that they are miraculous and sacred if you have the eyes to see, even the most ordinary of things begin to blow your mind

For years I have been singing the song “The Earth is our mother” and in my mind I pictured the globe- Gaia – our blue boat home. Recently, however, I heard Vandana Shiva, Physicist, Environmental Activist, talking about the role of earth in her culture in India. "For us,” she says “mud is not just the matrix of life in which we grow our plants, it's our building structure - it's our very sense of who we are." [quoted in a movie I recommend highly- Dirt! The Movie]

I realized she was talking about earth- the soil out of which we are all born. The soil which carries the building blocks of life, all those minerals and elements that make up our bodies, and the bodies of the plants and animals we eat. Says Physicist Fritjof Capra "The living organisms on earth have used the very same molecules of air, water and soil over and over again. Not just the same types of molecules but the very same molecules.", [Dirt! The Movie] Image singing that chant again- the earth is our mother, and picturing not the shining blue sphere, but a handful of dirt from your garden: the soil that feeds you and your children, the soil that turns fallen leaves and apple cores from garbage into life. As it says in the book of Genesis: [3: 19] “for out of [the ground] you were taken. For dust you are and to dust you will return.” The earth is our mother. It literally gives us life.

When I first read the passage by Wendell Berry we heard this morning, it awakened some deeper knowing in me- knowing in a deeper way what I had known since I was a child-- that everyone, everything I love as they die becoming part of the soil, and (I’ve been very clear with my family- when I die I want to be buried in a plain pine box) my own body will be part of that soil. I want to rejoin that millennia old chain of life, and when I die I want to rejoin it as soon as possible. When I thought of the soil that way, suddenly I was filled with an awe-filled reverence. That soil IS my ancestors, all our ancestors, all our loved ones, it is us.
As we saw in our opening meditation, dirt is not some inert material, soil is incredibly alive. I recently saw a movie called “Dirt! The Movie” and in it wine critic Gary Vaynerchuk said "With the amount of species that live in a teaspoon of dirt, I think it's very obvious dirt might be more alive than we are."

Because we live in a very fertile area, we take for granted that something will grow out of the ground, bidden or unbidden. We have to mow and cut back and sometimes even use poisons to keep thing from growing out of every bit of dirt. If we lived someplace like Africa we would know better. There about a third of the continent is dessert. Most of the continent is savannah, some naturally occurring, and much of it created when forests were cut down or burned to create farmland Nobel prize winner Wangari Maathai has devoted her life to planting trees to try to reclaim that desert, the desert that was created when we humans cut down or burned the trees and plants that held water and nutrients in the soil. Pierre Rabhi: Philosopher, Agro-ecologist Farmer turned philosopher has spent his life helping farmers in such arid landscapes to rebuild soil damaged through cultivation. He is quoted as saying "Africa is not poor. Ethiopia alone, if properly cultivated, could feed the entire African continent." [Dirt! The Movie.]

It is scary to realize that we in North America are not immune to this desertification. Our Top soil is not inert- not something that will always be there no matter what we do. We take it for granted, perhaps the same way we took our mothers for granted when we were children. The way we practice farming in modern times we lose six tons of topsoil for every ton of food produced "The Dust Bowl was an event, not quite on the same scale, but comparable to what happened after the last Ice Age. We made a really big change in the landscape just by bad farming practices” -- to quote urban arborist Bill Logan. [Dirt! The Movie ]

But this is not a sermon about science, this is a service about renewal. I am proposing that the earth itself- the soil is a kind of sacred text that can help us understand how to prevent the burn out, the desertification of our own hearts and minds, and can help us renew ourselves when we need it most.

I think we should start with roots. Roots hold the soil together. Roots draw water and nutrients down into the soil and up into plants. Without an interconnected of roots the soil washes away, or is blown away as in the days of the dust bowl. This is what causes desertification. This is why it is so important for farmers to plant cover crops in the off season- it keeps the soil healthy and whole when it is not producing crops. When we go through a storm, if we have laid down a web of connections, to one another, to our community, to the earth, it helps us stay whole during times of change or times of loss. Moreover, the deep roots help us through droughts, through times of scarcity. In times of drought the deep roots reach sources of water the more shallow roots cannot reach, they can also reach elements, nutrients from deep down. If the soil is low on phosphorous, say, but there is a layer several feet down the plants with deep roots can reach those nutrients that those annual plants with shallow roots cannot. Deep roots are the ones that take time to lay down, the roots that last from year to year, decade to decade. The earth teaches us that it is worth laying down roots slowly over many years, of keeping connected to the sources of nourishment and connection from long ago, because while we grow new roots every year, the plants that have deep roots have special sources of nourishment and strength to draw from. My grandfather told me once about how hard they worked to encourage their neighbors to plant a row of trees at the edge of their fields to help preserve the soil and slow the wind. Even in a life which depends on the annual crops, there must be trees, there must be deep roots for the health of the soil and of ourselves.

We also learn from the soil that we need change, and we need rest. A piece of land that has grown corn for too many years will bear less and less produce as the nutrients that corn needs are used up. Sometimes we need to just let the land rest- to lay fallow. By lay fallow we don’t mean that the bare dirt is just exposed to the sky for a year, we mean that it is uncultivated. In the same way rest for our soul is probably not sitting on the couch watching tv, but when soil is lay fallow it is “left to its own natural growth.” I guess for me this means to leave some time unscheduled sometimes- to be spontaneous and see what grows. Good farmers also rotate crops to keep the land fruitful. We all need change in those things we cultivate in our lives.

A natural ecosystem will find its own balance over the years if “left to its natural growth.” But when we cultivate land, when we cultivate ourselves, we have to very carefully keep track of the balance, to build a relationship of plants that are mutually supporting- elements that work in harmony with one another. It is widely known that it was the custom among the first nations people in this land to plant corn, squash and beans together- this is referred to as “the three sisters. Squash protects her sisters from weeds and shades the soil from the sun with her leaves, keeping it cool and moist. Beans help keep the soil fertile by converting the sun's energy into nitrogen filled nodules that grow on its roots. And the corn provides a trellis for the beans to climb. Or think of the compost pile. Most folks use a layering of dry and wet compost materials (lasagna is the common metaphor) Too much wet stuff and it will not get hot enough to transform. If there’s not enough oxygen it doesn’t transform (this is part of the problem with our current landfill system.) But once the right balance is achieved, the compost practically creates itself. What do you need for balance in your life right now?

And here’s the most amazing thing of all. What feeds the soil? Builds the soil? Waste. Death. Decay. Think about an old growth forest. There are trees there in all stages of life- young, old, and those laying there on the forest floor decaying. It can take a tree the size we see in our backyards about 20-25 years to decompose. All through that time it is food and habitat for many species of bugs, birds, rodents, bacteria, moss, even new trees. The leaves that drop from the trees in autumn become over the next few seasons the very food that will feed those trees and other members of the eco-system in future growing seasons. But what do we do in our own yards? We rake up all those leaves, haul away the dead trees, burn them or send them to landfill to keep things looking tidy. Then if we want to feed our yard we go buy fertilizer at the store. Here’s the wisdom I take from this scripture. What you need to feed your spirit is in you right now. It’s in your life, in your relationships, in the traditions and heritage you were born into. We so easily go looking far and wide to find food for the spirit, but all the basic building blocks are already around us. It’s in a story your grandmother told, memory of time shared with your father; it’s in this 400 year old religious tradition. Each generation does not have to start from scratch, but can let the leaves of past seasons, the lives of fallen trees that were the lives and work of our ancestors feed and nurture you. The same is true within your own life and spirit. You already know a lot. Experiences that may have seemed incidental at the time can come back to us later as wisdom. I never did become a professional ballet dancer, but I was so amazed to find that 20 years later all the work I did in ballet class as a child made yoga so much easier and fun for me as an adult. And as counter intuitive as it may seem, What you need to feed your spirit is in the loss you have experienced. Instead of raking loss and grief away to keep things tidy, sometimes the greatest gift we can give our spirits is to allow those griefs to remain where they are, to decay and change and be transformed into new life.

The main message I want to leave you with this morning is the same one we started with today. The earth, the sacred ground we walk upon, is our mother. All life comes from her, and she turns death back into new life. We must take care of her. We care for her by allowing deep roots to grow, by creating communities of balance, and by allowing the soil to rest and be renewed. The earth is our mother. She will take care of us. She will feed us and our children for generations to come if we remember to nurture and care for her.

The Wisdom of Giving (April 17, 2011)

2011-04-18T11:06:00.000-07:00

When I first joined my very first church as an adult, I knew that pledging was something every member was expected to do. I had grown up in a Unitarian Universalist church, and watched my parents pledge like clock work every year. As an older child I had even gotten my own little box of numbered envelopes to put my dollar in every week. But now that I was an adult I had a difficult question to answer. What was a responsible adult amount to give? I remembered that when I was young my parent’s church did a person to person canvas, which meant that someone would call them up, or even come visit, to talk to them about their pledge to the church. Now that I was an adult too, I wanted that conversation. I needed that conversation. I was afraid of that conversation. I wanted to be conscientious and do the right thing, but I wasn’t sure if I was up to the challenge.

The fear is that we will be asked to give more than we can give, whether it is to the church at Pledge time, to a loved one whose health is failing, or to a cause, like protecting the local water table from hydro-fracking chemicals. When we think about the poverty in the world, we almost instantly realize that we could give away everything we own and it would be barely a drop in the ocean. Sometimes I am afraid of being too stingy with both my money and time and love, and at the same time I am afraid of giving so much that I give myself away.

When I had been exposed to the rules in the Jewish and Christian scriptures as a teen-ager, I thought of them as an imposition on personal conscience and individual liberty. But after groping around how much to give, the idea of tithing started to seem somehow comforting and stable. Even the Hebrew scriptures, strict as they are some times, were not asking me to give away all my wealth, instead the book of Deuteronomy says [14:22] 22"You shall surely tithe all the produce from what you sow, which comes out of the field every year.” At the time the book of Deuteronomy was written they were talking about literally giving ten percent of your crops, but in recent centuries tithing has been understood in terms of annual income.

One of the 5 pillars of Islam is Zakāt - giving of 2.5% of one's possessions to charity each year. Zakat is expected of “every adult, mentally stable, free, and financially able Muslim, male and female.” The Muslim community also is responsible for making sure that these donations make their way to the folks who need it. It says in the Qur’an "The alms are only for the poor and the needy, and those who collect them, and those whose hearts are to be reconciled, and to free the captives and the debtors, and for the cause of Allah, and (for) the wayfarers; a duty imposed by Allah." (The Holy Qur'an 9:60). Islam offers a clear benchmark so observant Muslims can know when they have done their duty.

But you very rarely hear Unitarian Universalists talk about the biblical tithe, so how are we to know what is right and good? Well our UUA has created a “fare share giving guide” available on their website. It’s much less poetic than the Jewish or Islamic scriptural passages, but it generally ends up being between 2-7% of our adjusted gross income depending on how strongly you feel about this faith tradition. The first year I learned about this fair share guideline, I want to confess to you that it was a stretch for me to reach even that bottom rung—to contribute 2% of my family income to the church--but I also want to tell you that it felt great. It was a challenging but reasonable number, and it made me feel like I was supporting my church in a substantive way.

Then I head a colleague of mine explain, during a special fund drive, that he and his family had recently become tithers. Not just fare share givers, but tithers in the biblical sense. It blew my mind. Here he was, a young UU minister, still probably carrying his student loans from seminary, and he had committed himself to that ancient tradition of giving ten percent. Now I freely admit that this is still only a goal for me. But it is a goal. I challenge myself in good times and in bad to creep closer and closer to tithing myself.

Of course that dollar amount is higher in good times than in tight times, but we work hard to make sure that the percentage of our income that we give does not go down. I am encouraged in this by my favorite story about giving from the Christian Tradition. It is found in the Gospel of Luke:

[Jesus] looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury. And He saw a poor widow putting in two small copper coins. And He said, 'Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all of them; for they all out of their surplus put into the offering; but she out of her poverty put in all that she had to live on.'

(Luke 21:1-4)

This story reassures me when I worry that my small contribution doesn’t matter. According to the words of Jesus- and he was a man of few words- my pennies, your pennies are precious and important, even when they seem ridiculously small next to whatever Bill and Melinda Gates have been up to recently. The value of a gift can be determined not by how many zeros are at the end of it, but by what it means to you the giver, like the gift of the Widow’s mite, or the how the squirrel got his stripes. The size of our generosity is measured by what is in our hearts, not by the size of the check.

Furthermore, all of the religions traditions we’ve mentioned today are clear that there are many important ways of giving that do not involve money. In addition to Zakāt in the Islamic tradition, which is a required giving, there is also the concept of Saddka which means "voluntary charity". Saddka describes any time we give freely out of compassion, friendship or generosity. Abu Hurairah ,who was a companion of the prophet Muhammad, reported that the prophet said, "Every day the sun rises, charity is due on every joint of a person. Administering justice between two people is a charity; and assisting a man to mount his beast, or helping him load his luggage on it is a charity; and a good word is a charity; and every step that you take (towards a mosque) for daily prayers is a charity; and removing harmful things from the road is a charity."

Jesus also spoke about what are often called “acts of mercy.” His disciple Matthew tells of a time when [Matthew 25], Jesus was talking to his followers about the day of judgment:

34Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father… 35for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” 37Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? 39And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” 40And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me”.

In this spirit we at the Athens UU Church enter into our pledge season, trying to lift up the great variety of gifts that we offer on another. Of course we need all our members and friends to make a pledge to the ongoing health of the church: we need to keep the heat and lights on. We need crayons and construction paper and books for our children’s program. Our congregation needs our financial support to build and grow. But that is not enough to sustain a beloved community. When we take a casserole to one of our members who is going through a rough time, when we celebrate a young person’s success at the science Olympiad, or when we visit a member recovering from surgery in the hospital, these are the gifts we give that make us a beloved community.

Think of the great diversity of gifts which are necessary to keep the heart of this congregation beating. We need the gifts of those who patiently wash our mugs after coffee hour. We need folks who balance the Church’s accounts. We need folks who can lead worship, and folks who understand plumbing. We need folks who know how we can help bring justice to our world and we need folks who listen compassionately when we are troubled or in pain. We need folks who will sleep in bunk-beds so our youth can play flashlight tag and go on a silent vigil for their coming of age. We could not be the beloved community we are without all our great diversity of gifts.

Finally I want to think for a moment about why we give. The passage from the gospel of Matthew we talked about before implies that we help our fellows because on Judgment day we want to be found worthy, to sit at the right hand. In the UU tradition, especially as we are informed by our Humanist roots, we are not usually motivated to give because we hope for a reward in a future life, whether that be a place in heaven, or a better life in reincarnation, so let’s turn to the Anguttara Nikaya, (the gradual collection of the discourses of the Buddha) which lists a total of eight motives for giving, in the order from lowest to highest:

1. one gives with annoyance, or as a way of offending the recipient, or with the idea of insulting him.
2. fear also can motivate a person to make an offering.
3. one gives in return for a favor done to oneself in the past.
4. one also may give with the hope of getting a similar favor for oneself in the future.
5. one gives because giving is considered good.
6. "I cook, they do not cook. It is not proper for me who cooks not to give to those who do not cook." Some give urged by such altruistic motives.
7. some give alms to gain a good reputation.
8. still others give alms to adorn and beautify the mind.

By giving without attachment to how our gift is used or how the favor might be returned some day, by giving unconditionally we cultivate generosity, we cultivate a beautiful mind. Generosity is thought, in all of these great religions, to be one of the best tools on the spiritual path; As Sri Swami Sivananda (A 20th century yogic master) writes:

“By daily doing such acts of kindness and sympathy…His hard egoistic heart is gradually softened. He cultivates cosmic love. His heart expands. He has a wider outlook on life. He tries to feel his oneness with all beings. He learns that he can be happy only by making others happy, by serving others, by helping others, by removing the sufferings of others and by sharing what he has with others.”

If you are, like me, someone who has struggled to know the best ways to share your gifts with the world, always wondering if it is enough, you are not alone. But giving is not just a fiscal question, it is a spiritual question and by struggling with it truly, we come closer to knowing our own hearts, and knowing what things are important in this life. We give our gifts not only because sharing makes the world a better place for ourselves and for others, but because it is a powerful path to spiritual growth. We Unitarian Universalists are called to give not because we are commanded to do so, nor because of some future reward, but because we know that cultivating a generous heart is its own reward.

Endnotes:
(From Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim - one of the Six major collections of the hadith in Sunni Islam, oral traditions relating to the words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alms#5_Debts
(A.iv,236)
http://www.enabling.org/ia/vipassana/Archive/D/DeSilva/givingInThePaliCanonDeSilva.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zakat

We're On A Mission (March 20, 2011)

2011-03-24T15:36:00.001-07:00

Do any of you remember a movie from 1991 called “City Slickers?” It’s kind of a screw-ball comedy with Billy Crystal in which a trio of suburban middle aged men busy with family and work go on vacation for 2 weeks driving cattle from Colorado to New Mexico with real live cowboys. Towards the end of the movie one of them, Curly, played by Jack Palance (Curly) turns to Billy Crystal and says
Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is?
[holds up one finger]
Curly: This.
Mitch: Your finger?
Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don't mean [anything].

You must know what one thing is at the center of your life and devote yourself wholeheartedly to it. Every though this was as screwball a comedy as they come, I found myself overcome by tears throughout the end of the movie. Why? Because I was 21, and I was profoundly afraid of living my whole life without ever understanding that secret. I was terrified that I might die without ever having lived.

This begs the question- what does it mean to live, really live? Let’s pause now so each of us has a change to think of some moments in your own life when you felt like you were really alive…any moment that when you look back on it you said “I sure am glad I did that”...if more than one memory surfaces, begin to make a little collection of them, like beads on a string. There is an index card in your order of service, if you want to write them down, you can feel free to do that. Now look for any patterns you notice among those memories. What elements are there that you recognize, what do they have in common, like the string that holds the beads together? That, I submit, is your de facto mission. A mission is your reason for being, and here, collected on this string or on this index card are the moments when you have truly lived.

Now notice, does the pattern change over the course of your life? Is what is important to you now different than when you were a child or a teenager? I bet it has. See, mission is a fluid thing, it changes over time. And if we become conscious of it, we can guide it, we can make choices. Think about what might be missing from that string of memories. My father, who has been a musician nearly all his life said to me the other day “my one regret is that I never was part of a political protest” What things are there like that for you, the gap between what you have done, and what you feel would be a full and rich life. Notice what those missing things have in common. Adventure? Connection to other people? Quiet time for reflection? Because a mission is not about those individual acts, those acts are goals that support your mission. Mission is the thread that strings those all together. Now check out how that mission feel in your heart and body when you project it into your future. Does it make you excited or inspired, or maybe even a little afraid? Or do they make you feel heavy and tired: “I really AUGHT to…” Because as Rev. Howard Thurman wrote, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

Now notice any qualities that come to mind as you review your string of memories and dreams. Compassion? Courage? Beauty? I’ll give you an example of what I mean from the most well know mission statement in the western world today
“To explore strange new worlds
To seek out new life and new civilizations
To boldly go where no man has gone before”
Boldness is the quality with which the crew of the Star Ship Enterprise want to seek new worlds. It would have been quite a different show if they had “prudently” gone, wouldn’t it?

The next step could be to turn that thread into a statement, but it is not required. Whenever I try to write a mission statement for my own life, I feel it looses something. So right now I’ve got a image of my son in my mind- because he reminds me more than anything about the important relationships in my life, and how I want to live deeply into them. I’ve also got a memory of Muir woods in my mind, because that old growth forest reminds me of all that is beautiful and at risk in this global eco-system we share. Then I’ve got a image of this church, reminding me of both my calling to serve you and my tradition, and also my own spiritual journey. Now the problem with Curly’s secret to live- one thing- is that most of us are doomed right from the start. Anyone who has a partner or children or friends and also has a job, or any kind of work they feel passionate about has more than one thing, and sometimes those things compete for our time and attention. So for me the principle at the center of these 3 things is balance. Balance is a very important word to me, an important principle in how I live my life. It is easy for me to get so passionate about my work that I forget to spend an afternoon goofing off with my son, or my partner. It is easy for us as a planet to get so carried away with producing new better products that we forget the impact on the earth. And I know when I feel balanced, I am more present in my own life. So I guess for myself rather than a mission statement I could arrange three images in a triangle, with the word balance linking them.

Every religion tries to answer the question burning in our souls “what is the meaning of life?” I believe that the answer, in this Unitarian Universalist tradition, is highly individual, but there are some common themes. The great UU religions educator Sofia Lyon Fahs said “the religious way is the deep way” So living life deeply is one secret your faith offers. Our tradition also teaches us that serving the common good is essential to a well lived life, As Rev. Rebecca Parker wrote:
“You must answer this question:
What will you do with your gifts?
Choose to bless the world.
So our tradition invites us to live our life deeply, and to serve the common good with our gifts. But neither of those things really gives us a “to do” list for when we wake up in the morning. That depends on our one thing. One can live deeply and serve the common good if you are an elementary school teacher, or a machinist, or a chiropractor. So it’s up to us to ask “what is the meaning of MY life” and our faith tradition calls us to make sure our own mission, our own reason for being, is guided by certain principles, like respect for the inherent dignity of every person, and the interdependent web of life of which we are all a part. It encourages us to live out a mission different from that of the culture at large which I believe is “the one who dies with the most toys wins” or “you can never be too rich or too thin”

When I was getting ready to go on maternity leave, I had just started my first full time settled ministry. I knew that managing my time would be a challenge. So I signed up for a seminar called “First Things First” from the folks at Franklin Covey. Now here’s the funny thing about this seminar – it’s designed for business people, but it has religious values at it’s center. It believes that even if your boss is paying for the seminar, you are allowed to put family on your list of “first things” It encourages us to keep our mission in front of us whenever we have our calendar out, to look at the schedule for April and say “where is my family in this? Where is that old growth forest? Where is my spiritual life- My faith tradition?” The primary message was that when we get up in the morning, we do the most important things first- one executive said he didn’t answer the phone or open his e-mail in the morning until he had made $40,000- so that when that unexpected call comes in the afternoon, or when your child comes home from school early with a fever, you have already done the most important thing, and you can end the day saying “well, I didn’t get it all done, but I got the most important thing (singular!) done.” So whether you’ve got a mission statement for yourself written on that card, or a group of images, I encourage you to put some expression of your mission wherever you are when you start your day. Maybe it is an index card taped to your computer screen, or your bathroom mirror. Or I noticed just as I was writing this sermon, that I’ve already got a photo of Nick and a terrarium right next to my computer screen, all I would have to do is add some symbol for my spiritual life in community and I would have a physical representation of my own mission right there on my desk, like a little altar. By keeping your own mission constantly before you, it increases the odds that you can live your life by that mission, by the thread of meaning that makes you come alive, instead of being buffeted by the events of your days, instead of getting sucked into a life of getting the most toys.

Now I want to change our focus from personal mission, to the mission of this community we all share. Take a moment of reflection now to think about those moments in the life of this community when you have said to yourself “I’m really glad I made it to church that day” and I don’t just mean to this building, because sometimes we do church in other places, like at Mt. Pisgah, or the Phoenix Kid’s café. If you like to write things down, take a second card and list or draw some of those memories. Are you starting to get a picture of the mission of this church? What string links together those precious gems of our life as a community, a string that reaches all the way back into our first days in 1809, and will lead us into our future. Take a moment to write down any words, phrases, images, pictures, symbols that reminds you of what is our reason for being, our reason for coming together. Now let’s read together our mission statement as a church:

Our mission is to provide a forum for liberal religious expression in an atmosphere which encourages spiritual growth and ethical living.

One question we are asking ourselves as a church right now is “does our mission, our actual lived mission, fit inside this statement?” Have we changed at all in what we put at our center, in the direction we are traveling since we wrote that statement? Is there anything we would add or remove to make that statement more accurate, more complete?

But that’s not the most important question. That question- is how do we best use the resources of our community, the gifts each person brings, and the legacy handed down from our founders over 200 years, to serve our mission? We want to be unified by a shared sense of mission, and to express that shared mission in the living out of our life together. When the board, or Committee on Ministry or the worship team or the Committee for environmental justice and sustainability or when I or Josh roll up our sleeves for the good of our church, what things do we put first? At the end of the day, how will we know that we have lived that day to the fullest, both in the life of this beloved community and in our own personal lives?

Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is?
[holds up one finger]
Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don't mean [anything].
Mitch: But, what is the "one thing?"
Curly: [smiles] That's what *you* have to find out.

For You Were Strangers in That Land (March 6, 2011)

2011-03-24T15:25:00.000-07:00

For weeks before this past year’s General Assembly, (where important decisions for our denomination are made by delegates from our congregations) The UUA board had been having special meetings, as had our executive for the UU Minister’s Association in preparation for what they knew would be a powerfully explosive issue. You see, while the country was calling for a boycott of Arizona after the passage of SB1070, (that law that required anyone who looked like they might not be a citizen to show their ID at any time), our own 2012 Assembly was scheduled to be held in Phoenix. The minister’s chat was abuzz for weeks before our annual meeting. Should we boycott, knowing we would forfeit over 600,000 in hotel cancellation fees? Many said yes, and even started passing the hat to make up to defray the cost of moving the assembly. DRUUM issued a statement which expressed concerns about the safety of our members who would be subject to racial profiling under this law, and LUUNA also issued a statement concerned that our Latino/a members would experience harassment by local law enforcement.

I was a supporter of the boycott, but the words of Rev. Susan Fredrick-Gray changed my mind. She is the minister of the church in Phoenix, Arizona and she and her congregation had been working with the local grass roots immigrant rights group Puente. She said that though the boycott might make us feel good for a moment now, this was not what our brothers and sisters in Arizona most directly affected by the laws wanted. They wanted us to come and stand by them, to come march, to come and witness. The discussion was passionate and emotions ran high. It was hard to know whether conscience called us to witness for justice. But you know what was absolutely clear? That our mandate here was justice, and that this law, SB1070 and the anti-immigrant sentiment behind it are unjust and immoral, and that we as UUs must stand against it as strongly as we can. Ultimately the Assembly voted to hold the assembly in Phoenix as planned, but to fundamentally change the nature of that assembly. We voted to advice the UUA board to hold a justice-oriented “General Assembly in Phoenix in 2012 with a business agenda limited to the minimum allowed by the bylaws. We asked the UUA administration to work with leaders in Arizona UU congregations to establish an Arizona immigration ministry; asked the board to work in accountable relationships with DRUUMM, LUUNA, ARE, Equual Access, TRUUST, and other stakeholders to maximize the safety of historically marginalized groups going to Phoenix; called on the UUA board to direct economic transactions during the 2012 General Assembly towards partners and allies; and called on the board to provide resources to build the capacity of UUs to stand in opposition to systemic racism.”

So really, when it came time to vote for the new Study Action Issue, the issue that we as an association of congregations would commit to studying and putting into action over the next 4 years, when it came time to decide which of the 6 issues folks around the country had put before the assembly, it seemed right that we would chose “Immigration as a moral issue.” There was a feeling of unity growing among us. We had heard our brothers and sisters speak about their pain in Arizona and around the country, and our hearts were turned.

So here we are, back in Pennsylvania, where Immigration is not in the forefront of local politics. Here in this congregation the other current issue “Ethical Eating” has been a powerful source of reflection and action for us together. I invite us, starting here and now, to join in solidarity with our sister congregation in Phoenix, with all our brothers and sisters around the country, around the world, and let our work begin in our own hearts.

Way back in my first year in Seminary, on my first election day in California, there was an issue on the ballot called proposition 187, which would make sure that undocumented immigrants could not receive medical care, or public education or other social services. The proposition was titled “Save our State” and the argument was that we could save 3 million dollars a year if we didn’t provide such services to undocumented immigrants. The language of the proposition was fiery: “The People of California find and declare as follows: That they have suffered and are suffering economic hardship caused by the presence of illegal aliens in this state. That they have suffered and are suffering personal injury and damage caused by the criminal conduct of illegal aliens in this state. That they have a right to the protection of their government from any person or persons entering this country unlawfully.”

I was, at that time, enrolled in a class called “Basic Buddhist Meditation” taught by a Theravadan Monk. One of my classmates brought to our seminar this seemingly complex issue. Our teacher Bhanti said- it’s simple. It’s a matter of compassion.” He had long been trying to explain to us the importance of compassion in Buddhist teaching, explaining that in Buddhist practice the goal is to let go of all things except compassion and equanimity, that we hold on to compassion right up to the moment of enlightenment. There was a stunned silence in the classroom as he reduced months of fiery politicking in the media to just one concept – compassion. Would it be more compassionate to provide medical assistance to a sick or injured person, or to deny it?

The Hebrew Scriptures also offer us a clear response to this tangled issue. The book of Leviticus, the one with all the laws, says: (Leviticus 19:33-34 ESV ) “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt"

What I think is important in this passage, is that you shall love the stranger as yourself. First of all, notice that it says we shall LOVE the stranger. Today’s rhetoric around undocumented immigrants is so rarely loving. And we shall love them as ourselves, yet laws like SB1070 create a separate class of human beings, somehow less human than those who are citizens of this country. As if basic human rights do not need to be applied to all humans; the right of mother and child to be together. The right to due process. The right to a speedy trial. But the Hebrew scriptures are clear – though this law recognizes the difference between stranger and native, and it acknowledges that the stranger is at risk when sojourning among us, it is clear that there is to be no difference in treatment. Why? Because we were strangers in the land of Egypt. Or, for any of us living in America who are not first nations people, we were strangers in this land. If we ourselves were not born in a different country, our parents or grandparents or great grandparents were. The scriptures call on our empathic imagination to remember that we have been strangers, and so ask us to treat the stranger as ourselves.

Now I know the call to pure compassion is always simplistic. We all fear, and rightly so, that if we pour ourselves out in utter compassion, we will use ourselves up, there will be nothing left to give. So one school of thought on immigration reform is that we need, literally, better boundaries. We need walls, barbed wire and an armed citizenry to defend our boundaries. Lets look again at that preamble to prop 187: “The People of California find and declare as follows: That they have suffered and are suffering economic hardship caused by the presence of illegal aliens in this state.” The perception is that undocumented immigrants drain our resources. But a study by the tax lawyer journal from the American Bar Association argues that the undocumented immigrants pay more in taxes than they receive in social services. A 2005 New York Times article showed, for example that they pay about $7 billion annual to social security, with no hope of ever receiving a social security check.

Now look at the second sentence of prop 187 “That they have suffered and are suffering personal injury and damage caused by the criminal conduct of illegal aliens in this state. That they have a right to the protection of their government from any person or persons entering this country unlawfully.” We have a right to be protected from undocumented immigrants. Why do I need protection exactly? It is hard to gather conclusive data about the relationship of immigration and crime, but a number of studies, including one by the immigration Policy Center, based on U.S. Census Bureau data showed there was no increase in crime in relationship to undocumented immigrants, and a study by the public Policy Institute of California showed that cities with more immigrants have lower crime rates than comparable cities.

So the contention that we need protection from undocumented immigrants does not seem to be based on facts, it seems to be based on irrational fear. And that fear is not only directed at folks who are undocumented, but folks who LOOK or SEEM like they might be immigrants. That seems like racism pure and simple to me. Whenever we create a second class of humans, we are building oppressive structures. We cannot allow our immigration policy to be based on fear and xenophobia. It must be based in the reality of our shared lives together. This is where, since our very beginnings 400 years ago, the Unitarians come in. We bring the light of reason. The Study Action issue process starts with study. We begin with open minds to ask the basic questions about immigration: Who are the immigrants in our communities? What underlying factors contribute to global migration? And where are we complicit or accountable in these factors? We start our journey by asking questions, by paying attention, by inviting this issue into our “free and responsible search for truth and meaning.”

There are a lot of assumptions and half truths and downright lies out there in this debate about immigration. For example, the claim of prop 187 that undocumented immigrants costs us 3 million dollars a year in social services, when studies show this is simply not true. As a people of faith who believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every person (not just of American Citizens) it to me that Unitarian Universalists are called to stand up for an immigration policy that is based on reason and facts, rather than fear.

We must also insist that our immigration policies and practices are based on compassion and not hate. UUs, along with other activists around the country, plead the case of Marlen Moreno, the woman we met in our opening reading. She is mother of 2 children, one of who is only 10 months old. She is married to a legal resident, and came to the US with her parents when she was only 13 – undocumented. For this, she went to jail for 4 months. ‘Detained” they call it. At our recent Movie night we watched a fictional movie called “the Visitor” in which the hero is “detained” while awaiting deportation. A voice near me said in the dark “what? You can’t walk in there to visit like that with only one security check!” and I remembered one of our member’s brothers, who was “detained” without any charge for 4 ½ months while awaiting deportation. Those being detained have no idea how long they will be incarcerated, are denied even basic information about the status of their case, are separated from family who face significant obstacles and sometimes expense to stay connected with them. Family visits are limited to one adult at a time, can last no longer than ½ hour and are conducted through a glass partition, using wall phones. She told me later that: “The truth is, contrary to the movie where the professor and the mom had nothing else to do but to visit the young man, most families do not visit inmates in detention because of the 1/2 hour restriction. How many people can afford to take a whole day off for a 1/2 hour visit? Processing visitors takes anywhere from 20 minutes to 1 hour, assuming you know to arrive an hour before "the count" when all visits are interrupted for 1 to 1-1/2 hours for the officers to account for all inmates. Young children do not visit.” Her brother is now in Hong Kong, they told him one morning he was leaving that very day. Marlen Moreno was just days away from being taken away from her family, deported, but activists phoned, faxed, called the press, and were able to delay her deportation for a year. Still her future is uncertain. When reason and compassion are applied to the way our system treats undocumented immigrants like criminals, how can they be justified? It can’t really be to save the taxpayers money; Atlanta news station WSB-TV reported that the annual cost to taxpayers just to detain and deport immigrants adds up to $2.6 billion.

While in jail for her civil disobedience in protest of SB1070, UU Rev. Wendy von Zirpolo reported: “While inside the Maricopa Jail garage, I saw a young Latino man dragged past me and behind some vans, calling out ‘I am not resisting arrest. I am not resisting arrest.’ When I saw him again, perhaps only ten minutes later, it was clear he had been beaten. Beaten badly.” Whatever concerns we may have about the economic impact of immigration policy on this country, the act of separating mother and child, the act of beating a prisoner, these are not compassionate acts, and they are not necessary in order to uphold the laws of this country. I call for a reform of our laws to make them just and compassionate, and reform of the ways we implement these laws, that they be carried out in just and compassionate ways.

Last July, about 100 UU ministers and lay-people, along with president Peter Morales, flew from around the country to be part of the non-violent civil disobedience in response to SB1070. Of the 83 protesters who were arrested that day, 26 were UUs, including President Morales. Our UU protesters were wearing those saffron yellow t-shirts with big hearts reading “standing on the side of love.” Rev. Paul Langston Daily, one of the ministers participating in the march wrote later in his blog: “At lunch today, a colleague told us she overheard some people saying “Hey, look over there, it’s the Love people”.

We are called by these 2 pillars of our heritage- by reason and by love. With reason we will ask the questions that so urgently need to be asked, with reason we will seek truth and justice. With love, with compassion we will act, affirming the inherent worth and dignity of all people. Will you accept this call? Will you take up the rights of the stranger in our land, as we have stood for civil rights so many times before? Lets reach out to our brothers and sisters around the country, around the world letting reason and love change this broken system to one of compassion and justice.

Resources:

http://www.uuworld.org/news/articles/165916.shtml

http://www.foodincmovie.com/about-the-film.php

http://www.tcworkerscenter.org/2011/01/workers-center-works-overtime-to-uncover-problematic-j-1-visa-program-in-local-economy/

J. Lipman, Francine, J. (Spring 2006). Taxing Undocumented Immigrants: Separate, Unequal and Without Representation. The Tax Lawyer. lso published in Harvard Latino Law Review, Spring 2006. Harvard.edu

Eduardo Porter (April 5, 2005). "Illegal Immigrants Are Bolstering Social Security With Billions". New York Times.

Eunice Moscoso (2007-02-27). "Study: Immigrants don't raise U.S. crime rate". Arizona Daily Star.

“Crime, Corrections and California: what does Immigration Have to Do with it” PPIC California Counts: Population Trends and Profiles V. 9 Number 3 Feb 2008 by Kristin F. Butcher, Anne Morrison Piehl.

Immigration as a Moral Issue (Congregational Study/ Action Issue for 2010-2014)

The Cost Of Illegal Immigration By Justin Farmer Posted: 12:16 pm EDT May 10, 2010

http://www.uuworld.org/news/articles/165916.shtml

http://www.uuworld.org/news/articles/167428.shtml “'Justice' General Assembly to be held in Phoenix: Days and nights of work result in a plan most can endorse” By Jane Greer 6.28.10 UU World

http://www.tcworkerscenter.org/2011/01/workers-center-works-overtime-to-uncover-problematic-j-1-visa-program-in-local-economy/

J. Lipman, Francine, J. (Spring 2006). Taxing Undocumented Immigrants: Separate, Unequal and Without Representation. The Tax Lawyer. Also published in Harvard Latino Law Review, Spring 2006. Harvard.edu

Eduardo Porter (April 5, 2005). "Illegal Immigrants Are Bolstering Social Security With Billions". New York Times.

Eunice Moscoso (2007-02-27). "Study: Immigrants don't raise U.S. crime rate". Arizona Daily Star.

“Crime, Corrections and California: what does Immigration Have to Do with it” PPIC California Counts: Population Trends and Profiles V. 9 Number 3 Feb 2008 by Kristin F. Butcher, Anne Morrison Piehl.

Immigration as a Moral Issue (Congregational Study/ Action Issue for 2010-2014)

The Cost Of Illegal Immigration By Justin Farmer Posted: 12:16 pm EDT May 10, 2010

http://www.standingonthesideoflove.org/blog/trials-begin-for-15-clergy-and-leaders-arrested-in-july-29th-sb-1070-protests-in-phoenix/

Our Forefather, Joseph Priestley (February 6, 2011)

2011-02-18T07:33:00.000-08:00

Lesson for all Ages

One of the sources of our UU tradition is the wisdom of science, so
Today instead of a story we are going to do a science experiment
(light candle)
Can anyone tell me what will happen if I put this on the candle?
(put it out with candle snuffer we use to extinguish our chalice)
Why?
A candle needs oxygen to burn.
(relight candle, then put candle under jar until it goes out)
Who else needs oxygen? (we do)
How about a plant, does a plant need oxygen?
What do you think would happen if we put a plant in here?
(add plant, relight candle, put jar over both)
How’s the plant doing? Okay, keep an eye on it while we talk

Now when Joseph priestly was a little boy, people didn’t know about air. They just thought that between you and me was emptiness.
But then they made really good scales, and could see that a jar of air weighted more than a jar of nothing. But still they didn’t know what air was made of, and they didn’t know there was more than one kind of gas.

By doing this experiment, Priestly (who was a UU minister by the way, as well as an amateur scientist) Priestly showed that there is more than one kind of air- the kind that a fire needs to burn and the kind a plant needs to stay alive.
By the way, how is our plant doing?

Priestly found that not only would a plant do fine for 2 weeks even after a flame had burned away all the oxygen, but he also found that if you put a flame back in there 2 weeks later it would burn again, just like the first time!

But this is church, not science class, so what wisdom can we learn from this experiment?

That plants and animals need each other. We depend on each other; together we create the air that we breathe with nitrogen, oxygen, argon, carbon dioxide and some other gasses too.

It helps show is that we part of an interdependent web of life with all other living things.

Sermon

Joseph Priestly is almost the archetypal Unitarian. He was a heretic of the first order. He loved science, he loved dialogue and debate, the free exchange of ideas. He believed the religious system was filled with errors, and that the political system would benefit from a good revolution or 2. He spoke his mind no matter what the cost.

First, I want to tell you about Priestly the scientist- because that is what he is most famous for. Ironically, he was a minister and a school teacher when he made his most important discoveries. He had grown up in a family of religious dissenters from the Church of England, but he was a dissenter among dissenters, and was denied membership in the Independent church his family went to because of his heretical ideas. But he grew up to be a minister anyway, preaching at a congregation of about 60 people, just about the size of this congregation, and supplemented his income by starting his own school of 20 boys where he published his first book “Rudiments of English Grammar.” His grammar book helped get him a job at a bigger, more prestigious Dissenting school called the Warrington Academy. Somehow between preaching and teaching, he found time for his hobby- science. In particular he had the passion of his day for electricity and what was then called “Natural philosophy.” Electricity was in those days new and cutting edge. He bought the latest electricity gear for his lab, and after some work in the field, decided to write the first ever popular history of electricity. It was to be in English instead of Latin as was the usual language for books about science, so that the field of electricity would become more accessible to everyone. He headed to London to meet the leading thinkers in the field in hopes they would give him what he needed to write his book.

It was through his connections at the Warrington academy that he was Introduced to the Royal Society, and to Benjamin Franklin. In those days, the leading “electricians” hung out in the London Coffee House and called themselves “The Honest Whigs.” Their conversations swung from libertarian politics to the need for a “rational Christianity,” to theories of electricity liberally interspersed with wine and cheese and apple-puffs. The Honest Whigs were not only happy to welcome into their midst, loaning him the books and pamphlets he needed about the history of the study of electricity, and giving him information about their own studies on the subject, but they also encouraged him in his own research.

Priestly threw himself into this writing and research. In 1767 he published “The History and Present State of Electricity, with Original Experiments” which became the standard text on the subject and solidified his relationship to the scientific community. It was in this book that the story of Ben Franklin’s famous experiment with the kite and the key was first published. The book also contained some of Priestley’s own work and even a section called “A description of the most entertaining experiments performed by electricity.” His goal was not to set himself up as the keeper of secret specialized knowledge, but to encourage everyone to think and learn and experiment in the new and exciting arena of electricity.

That same year Joseph, his wife Mary and their 4 year old daughter Sally moved to Warrington where he got a new job as minister at the Mill-Hill Chapel. Though this was a bigger congregation, priestly still had plenty of time for his experiments. It was here that he made his most popular discovery, enabled through the serendipity that the temporary house he moved into while his new home was being renovated was right next to the Jakes and Nell brewery. He noticed that the fermenting vats gave off what he called “fixed” air, now called carbon dioxide, which had been discovered only 12 years before, and his neighbors humored him by letting him do experiments with the air over their vats. The discovery of soda water did not even take any fancy equipment, as it seems Priestley was able to carbonate regular water by pouring it back and forth from one cup to another. Now there was such a thing as sparkling water back then, it was mineral water taken from certain springs. It was a rare thing that had to be found and could not be made. Had priestly kept his knowledge to himself and sold it to industry, he could have been a wealthy man – think about today’s lucrative soda market. But Priestly believed in sharing information freely, and printed a pamphlet right away on how to do it yourself.

This happy discovery set Priestly on a new path- studying the chemistry of air and gas. His most important discoveries were yet to come. The first was the experiment I shared with the children earlier today- though I left out one of the main actors. Mice. Many a mouse met his or her demise in Priestley’s experiments both in electricity and in chemistry. Apparently priestly had been trapping mice in jars since he was a boy, and had noticed that they died pretty quickly if he sealed the jar. In 1771, he decided to compare the fate of a plant trapped in a jar. It amazed him that the sprig of mint he trapped fared so much better than the mice and frogs. Moreover, he found that if he put a mouse into a jar in which a flame had burned out, that the mouse would die at once. So he repeated the experiment with the flame and the mint, the experiment we did this morning with the children. In 1772 he introduced a mouse to the experiment, putting the mouse in the “restored air” and found that, as he described in his own words in a letter to Benjamin Franklin “The same mouse also that lived so well in the restored air, was barely recoverable after being not more than one second in the other. I have also had another instance of a mouse living 14 minutes, without being at all hurt, in little more than two ounce measures of another quantity of noxious air in which a plant had grown.” (p. 78)

This simple experiment was a major breakthrough. It changed not only how we thought we knew about air, but also what we thought we knew about the relationship between plants and people. Franklin wrote back to Priestly saying “I hope this will give some check to the rage of destroying trees that grow near houses, which has accompanied our late improvements in gardening, from an opinion of their being unwholesome. “ (p. 82) Writer Steven Johnson in his book “The Invention of Air” postulates that this discovery was one of the foundations on which eco-system science was built. For this discovery Priestly was awarded the Copley Medal by the Royal Society. Priestly kept experimenting with what as then called “Subtle fluids” which we now call gases, and was the first to identify 10 of them, one of them Oxygen.

This was the enlightenment, a time when new ways of thinking, new fields of knowledge were opening like scenic vistas to the thinkers of the day. Writes Priestley’s biographer “There were literally dozens of paradigm shifts in distinct fields during Priestley’s lifetime, watershed moments of sudden progress where new rules and frameworks of understanding emerged. Priestly alone was a transformative figure in four of them: chemistry, electricity, politics, and faith.” Schoolchildren still learn of the role his good friend Ben Franklin played in the American Revolution, and Franklin was eventually exiled from London in 1775 for his pro-revolutionary views. Priestly had also written a few pamphlets over the years against “forg[ing] chains for America” (p. 129); he became one of the leading supporters of American Independence in England, and his views were know in widening circles. Samuel Johnson, a pamphleteer against colonial freedom, is said to have commented: “Ah, Priestly. An evil man, Sir. His work unsettles everything.” (p. 129). But because during this time his patron was a Lord Shelburne, (in exchange for which Priestley was tutoring Shelburne’s 2 sons and maintaining his library), he seems to have kept his political views quiet during those years, grumbling to friends instead of continuing his stream of pamphlets. Eventually his political reputation caused Priestley to loose this sponsorship, as Shelburne had political aspirations. The loss of the sponsorship was a crushing financial blow, but Priestly met a new group of Enlightenment thinkers and captains of fledgling industrial society. They were called the Lunar Society, (or “the lunatics”) and many of them were willing to become Priestley’s “subscribers” and had instruments custom made for him.

Despite all the cool new gear, in this period Priestley turned his reformer’s gaze to religion. He and his friend Rev. Theophilus Lindsey founded the first Unitarian church in 1774. Priestley put forth in his book “History of the Corruptions of Christianity” the theory that since the first days of Christianity the religion had become corrupted in numerous ways. The idea of the divinity of Christ was one such “corruption” He traced the history of this thinking and found that in the very early church God occupied a higher position than his son, and it wasn’t until the last 3rd century that divinity was bestowed on Jesus. (Robinson p 22-23) He was on the cutting edge of heresy with the idea that Jesus was completely human. Priestly wrote that there was “no trace of the apostles having ever regarded their master in this high light” and also that “It cannot be said that anything is ascribed to him that a mere man (aided, as he himself says he was, by the power of God his Father) was not equal to.”) (quoted in Robinson p. 23)

In “The Corruptions” Priestly pulled apart every kind of miraculous or magical aspect of Christian theology, including the existence of the holy spirit, the trinity, predestination, the Eucharist, and the deification of saints. But Priestly understood himself to be a faithful Christian, faithful to Christianity in its pure form as it was originally practiced. He writes “this historical method will be found to be one of the most satisfactory modes of argumentation, in order to prove that what I object to is really a corruption of genuine Christianity, and no part of the original scheme” (p. 156). For Priestly, doing a historical analysis of Christianity and stripping away the miraculous and the magical, was part of the radical reform through which new paradigms had been born in the scientific and political worlds. His religious ideas were very influential to Thomas Jefferson who wrote in a letter to John Adams “I have read his Corruptions of Christianity, and Early Opinions of Jesus over and over again; and I rest on them…as the basis of my own faith.” Then as now presidential candidates were scrutinized for their beliefs, and Priestley’s work enabled Jefferson responded “I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished anyone to be: sincerely attached to his doctrines in preference to all others, ascribing himself every human excellence and believe he never claimed any other.” (p. 156)

Other folks were not so sympathetic. Archdeacon Samuel Horsley called Priestley’s writing an “extraordinary attempt…to unsettle the faith, and break up the constitution of every ecclesiastical establishment” (p. 158). Even his scientist friends could not all follow him into his religious dissent.

Priestly preached a sermon in 1785 called “The Importance and Extent of Free Inquiry” which included in it this metaphor “We are, as it were, laying gunpowder, grain by grain, under the old building of error and superstition, which a single spark may hereafter inflame, so as to produce an instantaneous explosion; in consequence of which that edifice, the erection of which has been the work of ages, may be overturned in a moment, and so effectually as that the same foundation can never be built upon again.” (p. 159) This sermon earned him the nickname of “gunpowder Joe,” but it was his political views that really got him into trouble.

Among the liberal thinkers Priestly hung out with, now calling themselves the “Constitutional Society” there was support of the French Revolution. It seemed a logical next step in political reform after the American Revolution so successfully had put in place a constitutional democracy. The opposition was the “Church and King” movement. They opposed the American Revolution, the French Revolution and they opposed reformation of the Church of England. They put an add in the Birmingham paper in response to one by the Constitution Society saying that “Whatever the modern republicans may imagine, or the regicidal propounders of the rights of men design, let us convince them there is enough loyalty in the majority of the inhabitants of this country to support and defend their King.” (p. 163) A mob formed the night of that event, and angered to find that the Constitutional Society had gone home 3 hours early, they burned down the New Meeting House, including a bonfire of books and pews on the front steps. They then burned down the Old Meetinghouse. Samuel Ryland, A friend of Priestly went to his home to warn him about the mob, and Priestly fled to his Ryland’s house. It was a good thing too, because they burned Priestley’s home and lab to the ground, destroying all his equipment and his library. Ryland and others had lost their homes as well. Priestly tried to live under the radar in England for a while, serving as a minister in London, but he was shunned by most of the members of the Royal Society for his religious and political views. When the French legislative assembly made him an honorary citizen in 1792, the public ire was re-awakened, and spewed forth in pamphlets and cartoons. Eventually Priestley followed his son Joseph Jr. to America where he was building a new settlement in Northumberland Pennsylvania.

His supporters in America welcomed him with open arms, and he was offered a position a the University of Pennsylvania in their Chemistry department, but Priestly chose the family life in Northumberland, and preached to the church there, and in Philadelphia whenever he could make the multiple day journey. Sadly his wife and son Harry died in the same year before their new home was even guilt. And before long Priestly was in trouble again. Old friend like John Adams began to distance themselves from his radical fiery sermons (much as presidential candidates today have had to do). Priestly was disillusioned with the way the principles of the revolution been implemented in a government that was not always true to its principles, more like the Monarchy against which they had rebelled. Members of the Adam’s administration wanted to have Priestley prosecuted under the Alien and Sedition Acts, the passage of which was in fact one of those acts which Priestly felt to violate the constitution of this young land.

He published a volume in 1799 called “Letters to the Inhabitants of Northumberland and its Neighborhood,” his last major work, in which he wrote “To find in America the same maxims of government, and the same proceedings, from which many of us fled form Europe, and to be reproached as disturbers of government there, and chiefly because we did what the court of England will never forgive in favor of liberty here, is, we own, a great disappointment to us, especially as we cannot now return.” (p. 195-6) Thomas Jefferson, still a great friend and admirer of Priestly wrote that the essays were “the most precious gifts that can be made to us… From the Porcupines of our country you will receive no thanks: but the great mass of our nation will edify and thank you.” (p. 196) and in fact when Jefferson became president Priestly wrote “for the first time in my life (and I shall soon enter my 70th year) I find myself in any degree of favor of the governor of the country in which I have lived, and I hope I shall die in the same pleasing situation.” (p. 200) And so he did, writing and editing in his very last days.

So what can we take from this story, the life of one of our founding fathers, a father of both modern chemistry, and of our Unitarian faith tradition. Certainly we can admire his capacity to help birth new paradigms, and to stand behind them even when it cost him dearly. We can, with Priestly, strip away those parts of religious tradition, even our own, that contradict what we know of this world, what we know of truth. But I think today what I want to lift up is that even a minister can be a scientist, and even a schoolteacher can make a difference in the world of politics. In this age of profound separation of fields, of increasing specialization, none of us should be afraid to stick a candle under a jar to see what happens, nor should we hesitate to study religious history to see what new things we can learn, nor should we be afraid to stand up for our political principles. We can see, as Priestly did, as so many of the great figures of the enlightenment did, that all this knowledge informs other knowledge, much as a plant restores air for the flame. It is in the intersection, the cooperation of all these things that a new paradigm is born.

Resources:
Steven Johnson, The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith Revolution and the Birth of America. New York: Riverhead Books, 2008.

David Robinson. The Unitarians and the Universalists. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1985.

Where do we Go From Here: Martin Luther King’s Vision for the Future (January 16, 2011)

2011-01-21T09:48:00.000-08:00

When I was a little girl growing up in a UU church, our minister often talked about Jesus in the context of 3 other heroes- Mahatma Gandhi, Susan B Anthony and Martin Luther King. So I knew at a young age that King was an important role model, was someone who lived a life of integrity, a life that today as when I was a child, reflects a vision of a more just and peaceful world. Our own Beacon Press has begun publishing a series of books from the Martin Luther King Archives -- some unpublished works, some which have been out of print for many years -- including his last book “Where do we Go From Here: Chaos or Community.” which has something to teach us about that vision, about our way into the future.

King wrote this book after more than a decade of action had brought into being important pieces of legislation, like the voter rights act, and the civil rights act, yet at this time the non-violent tactics of the civil rights movement were being questioned for those who felt that no progress could be made without violence. In the same year that the voter rights act was finally passed, just 3 months later 6 days of riots tore apart the Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles- 34 people had been killed, thousands were injured or arrested. It seems the Watts riots of 1965 weight heavily on King’s mind as he wrote this book in 1967.

While acknowledging the tremendous strides for civil rights made in his lifetime, King felt strongly that there was more work to be done, and that all of us whether black or white, rich or poor were called to help create a more just world. In many ways the situation King describes is not very different from where we are today. The landmark legislation that broke down segregation and ended legalized discrimination has been passed, but creating a truly equal world for folks of all colors has yet to be achieved. Changing laws is not enough to change our culture, nor to change the hearts of all Americans.

Because, dear friends, though 40 years have passed injustice is not only a fact of King’s time, but of our own. King reminds us of many of the inequities our country faced in the late 1960s: the racial gaps in housing, education, jobs and poverty. He points out that in his time half of all Negros lived in substandard housing, had half the income of their white brethren, had twice the infant mortality. Those of us who gathered this past Tuesday to discuss King’s writing wondered how those statistics might be different today. It took a little digging, but I found some numbers that were really informative.

A 2009 Urban league report shows “that Blacks remain twice as likely to be unemployed, three times more likely to live in poverty and more than six times as likely to be imprisoned compared with whites.”
In education, for example, the progress has been substantial. In 1968, 70% of African Americans were high school drop-outs. Now, the figure is closer to 20% and there has been over a 300% improvement in the rate of African Americans who attend college But a significant gap persists. Barely half of African-American, Latino, and Native American students graduate from high school, with African American students graduating at 54%, Latinos at 56%, Native Americans at 51% and their white counterparts at 77%. WE have also seen progress in higher education. Fifty-five percent of African-American high school seniors go on to college these days, compared to 45 percent in 1970. But only 43 percent of African-Americans who enter college graduate – 20 percent lower than the rate for whites.

So though there have been significant strides, there is a long way to go. In the elementary schools only 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys, and only 12 percent of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of white boys. Could this difference be explained by the economic circumstances of the students? It seems not, as poor white boys do just as well as African-American boys who do not live in poverty, (this was measured by whether they qualify for subsidized school lunches.)

A really heartbreaking gap is in infant health and mortality. Dr. Michael Lu, a UCLA Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Public Health reported that African-American children are twice as likely as white children to be born at a low birth-weight, twice as likely to be born premature and more likely to die in infancy. African-American women are three to four more times likely to die in childbirth as white women. Again, income was factored in, and race alone seemed to have a significant impact on health.

King noticed how in his time folks in predominately black and poor urban areas had to pay more and travel farther for basic goods. Just last year community organizers in East Palo Alto finally achieved a victory; they now have a grocery store into their community after a decades long struggle from 1974 to 2009, when no grocery store could be convinced to locate in their city. Imagine that for 25 years in a city of 29,000 everyone had to leave the city to buy fresh groceries. Yet a 2008 MSNBC report shows that many urban centers still are without stores where residents can buy fresh healthy foods, which is particularly significant in neighborhoods where residents lack a car or decent bus routes to commute to grocery stores in more affluent arias. What organizers call “food apatite” continues even today.

When I grew up hearing stories of the civil right movement, I thought of racism and oppression as a thing of the past, overcome by our great legislative strides of the 1970s. But now it is clear to me that just because our laws say that persons of all races have equal rights, this does not guarantee that persons of all races will have equal opportunity. According to an ACLU 2009 study, “Black and Latino students attend schools more segregated today than during the civil rights era. Schools are still separate and not equal more than 50 years after the U.S. Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education.” Racism and racial injustice are alive and well today, and King challenges our complacency with his challenge that “with each modest advance the white population promptly raise the argument that the Negro has come far enough.” (p. 11)

We all know the violent and oppressive history of slavery in our country, but It bears repeating that most African Americans came here in chains, with out possessions, without rights, without even family ties. King reminds us that it was a practice for generations to tear families apart- to separate mothers and children, brothers and sisters. He reminds us that when slavery was finally abolished, at a time when the American Government granted white settlers millions of acres of land in the western U.S., “Four million newly liberated slaves found themselves with no bread to eat, no land to cultivate, no shelter to cover their heads. It was like freeing a man who had been unjustly imprisoned for years, and on discover his innocence sending him out with no bus fare to get home, no suit to cover his body, no financial compensation…to help him get a sound footing in society.” (p. 83-84) Or to quote Frederick Douglas “Emancipation granted the Negro freedom to hunger, freedom to winter amid the rains of heaven. Emancipation was freedom and famine at the same time.”

The systemic realities of broken families, separate and unequal education, discrimination and “blockbusting” in the housing market, and a history of profound poverty affected African-Americans in King’s time, and affect racial minorities in our time today. Legacies of poverty are handed down from generation to generation just as are legacies of education, property and privilege. It is easy to say “it’s been over 40 years since the civil rights legislation passed, why are we still talking about this?” But there has never been a sustained systematic program to overturn those basic inequalities, and the passage of time is not in and of itself a force that guarantees eventual justice. We know from Gandhi’s work in India that societal oppression and inequity can persist for centuries if unopposed. King responds “Based on the cruel judgment that Negroes have come far enough, there is a strong mood to bring the civil rights movement to a halt or to reduce it to a crawl. Negro demands that yesterday evoked admiration and support, today – to many – have become tiresome, unwarranted and a disturbance to the enjoyment of life.” (p. 12) To king the work of civil rights will not be ended until all those gaps- the education gap, the housing gap, the infant mortality gap are closed and the people of this country really do have equal opportunity.

I want to confess to you that I caught myself in this thinking sometime, to feel that because there has been this gap as long as I have been on this planet, it must somehow make sense, it is just “the way things are”. King cites Ruth Benedict’s definition of racism as: “the dogma that one ethnic group is condemned by nature to hereditary inferiority and another group is destined to hereditary superiority.” (p. 73) So how can I justify to myself the deep inequalities in our society unless at some level there is a seed of that racist notion that one ethnic group is destined to hereditary superiority?

Our Unitarian Universalist association has, through deep soul searching and attempts to understand the mistakes of its history, decided that we need to be held accountable. We believe that it is not for the European-American members of our churches to decide when racism has been eliminated from our communities, we ask our members of color to hold us accountable for creating an anti-oppressive institution. Because we know in the past 300 years we have allowed great injustices to go un-rectified, we have been content with a snail’s pace towards progress. We know that sometimes the pain of the oppressed is invisible to people of privilege.

We want to be held accountable, not only for our action but our inaction, for whatever injustice goes un-noticed or un-addressed. Our hearts are broken by this history and present reality of injustice, and we ask with King “Where do we go from here?” For King one of the most important answers to the question “where do we go from here” – is that we address poverty, the poverty which oppresses people of all races. White and black, Hispanic and Asian must join together to lift everyone out of poverty. He writes that “We are called to play Good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be beaten and robbed as they make their journey through lige. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it understand that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.” (p. 198) King cites research that if we took just 2% of our GNP we could guarantee a job to every adult at a living wage, an amount similar to that spent on the war in Vietnam during his day. He notes, as so many have since, that we choose to prioritize the war overseas instead of our own war on poverty at home.

This was another important road forward for King, who called us to make a “peace offensive” waging peace around the world. He writes “If we assume that life is worth living and that man has a right to survive, then we must find an alternative to war.” (p. 194) He wanted this not only because African-American men were dying in the war in Vietnam at twice the rate of white men, but also because he because he believed the only way we could be come a truly just and great nation, the only way for humanity to survive and reach its potential in this world we inescapably share with all nations and races, was to put an end to war. Writes King: “It is not enough to say ‘We must not wage war.’ It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.” (p. 195).

Given King’s courageous and principled commitment to non-violent action his call to end war should not surprise us. Further, he believed that non-violent action was the only possible path to create a peaceful world- it was an alternative to war. Where shall we go from here? If we chose war we choose a future of chaos, if we choose non-violence, there is a possibility of world community.

By 1967 African-American activists were beginning to question the practice of non-violence which seemed so slow. The saw that the non-violent method had lead to laws being changed, but that these laws were not being enforced, nor did racism cease. Non-violence felt to many like a perpetuation of the submissive attitude which had been required of African Americans for centuries. How much better, many thought, to express their anger and frustration more directly. Many activists were moved by Frantz Fannon’s book The Wretched of the Earth which counseled ”that violence is a psychologically healthy and tactically sound method for the oppressed… that violence is the only thing that will bring about liberation.”(p. 56) But King’s could not be turned around. His vision was for the future beyond the struggle for civil rights. He knew that black and white would have to live together in this country. He knew that there was an inescapable network of mutuality that bound us together saying: “In a real sense, all life is interrelated. The agony of the poor impoverishes the rich; the betterment of the poor enriches the rich. We are inevitably our brother’s keeper because we are our brother’s brother. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.” (p. 191)

This resonates with our own 7th principle- the interdependent web of life. King’s vision for the future is one we UUs must take seriously, because he bases it on principles that are so much at the core of who we are. He is a universalist in the literal sense because he believes, with us, that “Deeply rooted in our religious heritage is the conviction that every man is an heir to a legacy of dignity and worth. ... There is no graded scale of essential worth. …. The worth of an individual does not lie in the measure of his intellect, his racial origin or his social position. Human worth lies in relatedness to God. An individual has value because he has value to God. Whenever this is recognized, ‘whiteness’ and ‘blackness’ pass away as determinants in a relationship and ‘son’ and ‘brother’ are substituted.” (p. 102-3)

King issues a special charge to white liberals- those like the Unitarian Universalists, those of us who believe in the inherent worth and dignity of all persons. He wonders how we can look at these persistent inequities between the races in the United Sates, we who know the history of how power and oppression have moved in this country, and who have not yet committed to work to end these inequities, these injustices in our country and in the world.
“The white liberal must see that the Negro needs not only love but also justice. It is not enough to say, “We love Negroes, we have many Negro friends.” They must demand justice for Negroes. Love that does not satisfy justice is no love at all.” (p. 95) This is where Unitarian Universalists hear their call to racial justice today. We understand that we cannot let our passivity enable an un-just status quo. What King said in 1967, we have believed for a century or more, that “There is nothing to keep us from remolding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.” (p. 199)

We, as a denomination, have issued our statement of conscience -- we know the work of racial justice is not finished, nor the work of economic justice, nor the eradication of violence in our world. We know that racism is not a black issue, class-ism is not an issue for the poor, and homophobia is not a gay issue. No matter who we are, these are our issues, because they stand between us and a just, peaceful world. We honor Martin Luther King’s birthday because the history of the civil rights history is American history, it is your history and mine. We celebrate today because King’s vision of the future is our vision of the future – a vision of not chaos but community. One nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Endnotes:
King, Martin Luther Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community Boston: Beacon Press, 2010.

http://articles.cnn.com/2009-03-25/us/black.america.report_1_whites-blacks-urban-league?_s=PM:US Report sees 'sobering statistics' on racial inequality March 25, 2009

http://www.newsbatch.com/race.htm “Race and Ethnic Policy Issues” updated 2008

http://www.educationequalityproject.org/what_we_stand_for/achievement_gap “What Is The Achievement Gap?” Education Equality Project

“More African-Americans Attend College, But Graduation Lags” Post by News One in Nation on May 10, 2010 at 8:46 am http://newsone.com/nation/news-one-staff/more-african-americans-attend-college-but-graduation-lags/

“Black boys score far behind white students: Poverty alone doesn't seem to explain gap; expert cites 'racial differences'” By Trip Gabriel The New York Times updated 11/9/2010 4:41:51 PM ET http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40095887/ns/us_news-the_new_york_times/

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2010/05/05/racism-behind-disgracefulinfant-mortality-rates-among-africanamericans “Is Racism Behind High Infant Mortality Rates Among African-Americans?” By Megan Carpentier, RH Reality Check May 5, 2010 - 6:00am

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local/peninsula&id=7118331 “East Palo Alto gets first grocery store” ABC Local News, Friday, November 13, 2009

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28300393/ns/health-diet_and_nutrition/ “Urban areas struggle to get grocers, fresh food Inner city ‘food deserts’ are instead loaded with fast food and fatty snacks” Associated press 12/18/2008

http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=bc8c6994f8bbccf16cf0a83663f3a445 “Racial Inequality Still Going Strong in U.S.” San Francisco Bay View, News Report, Peter Phillips, Posted: Apr 27, 2009

Holy Moments (Janary 6, 2011)

2011-01-12T09:03:00.000-08:00

It happened at the ground breaking for the Opportunity Center. It was to be the only housing shelter in the county, with a wing for single people and a wing for families. When I went to the first briefing on the project I had been really touched by the architect’s vision of the space- it was so artistic and focused on a blending of indoor and outdoor space to be welcoming to un-housed people who were skeptical of the indoors. But on the day of the groundbreaking I don’t remember the scene too clearly; we were outside near the site of the building project, and local businesses had provided a table-ful of finger food. I was there with a few members of my congregation, some of whom were on the board of the capitol campaign, and we were representing a congregation that had surprised itself by raising $100,000. Different dignitaries got up to the microphone to speak, and when Jim Burklo, the founding minister of Urban Ministries got up to speak, a wave of the power of that moment swept over me. Jim explained that for decades landlords had refused to rent space for a shelter, but after decades of being denied a place to shelter those who needed to come in out of the cold and rain, here we were. All these people who had gathered to celebrate were there because they had believed in this common vision. I was overwhelmed by the holiness of the moment; he puncturing of ordinary by a flood of hope, the real concrete knowledge that people could come together to change this very particular and local, but in no way small part of the world.

That was a holy moment for me. It surprised me because it was different than what usually comes to mind when I think of a holy moment. I think for a lot of Unitarian Universalists our most commonly shared holy moment is one stumbled upon in nature. We share this also with that great poet and activist Wendell Berry, whose gift is to capture it in his poetry:

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

I can almost see that place “where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.” And feel the peace that such a place would give.

So how can 2 such different moments- one in a crowded party and the other in the solitude of a wild place, how can they both be holy, what do they have in common?
The most common contemporary meaning of the word holy is “exalted or worthy of complete devotion as one perfect in goodness and righteousness” but we usually think of holy as “pertaining to” the divine. So we need to wrestle with that for a moment. We Unitarian Universalists are very diverse theologically. We are atheists and theists and pantheists and agnostics. But because we are Universalists, we believe that whatever is most important, whatever is most worth of devotion, whatever is good and right is so for all people. We believe that not only prophets of old can experience something holy, but such experiences are available to everyone. It is the first source of our living tradition we find on the inside of the hymnal; “direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves is to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces that create and uphold life.” For those of us who use the word “divine” to describe those forces that create and uphold life, we Unitarian Universalists conceive a divine that must be accessible to all people.

As diverse as we are, as diverse as the many people sharing this world with us, naturally we can expect to see some diversity in the holy moments experienced by each of us; we should expect how we experience the holy to be as various as we are. People have told me over the years about holy moments that happen between themselves and another person, one woman told me that she has experienced several such moments playing softball. For me, I often find that the presence of live music increases the possibility of something holy happening- something about the creating of art before our very ears. I know folks who will mention privately that it is the conjugal act where they experience their holy moments.

A holy moment is not something that comes only to Moses on the mountaintop, but to all who are looking carefully and all who are open to awe and wonder and gratitude in the experience of this life. In a novel by Tamora Pierce called “The Trickster’s Choice” the heroine has a special gift- a “trick of sight” and with this gift she can refocus her vision so that she can see magic wherever it is present around her. I liked this image immediately, because it reminds me of how each of us experiences the holy in our own lives. We refocus our sight from the ordinary to seeing the extraordinary present in the very same places and people and events. Now this is a character from fantasy fiction, where magic defies our laws of nature. But I think we of this world miss out on a lot of holy moments, miss out on the miraculous because of the way our sight is focused. We think that because we did not witness the parting of the red seas that there are no holy moments in our ordinary lives. I believe the holy functions within the laws of physics, and that this makes it no less special. So Today I invite you to practice the trick of sight that allows us to see the holy in our own lives.

I also want to acknowledge, that sometimes these moments happen alongside tragedy or despair. Sometimes being with someone who is dying is imbued with a sense of holiness that shines through the pain and fear of the moment. There can be in such moments a connection between people, or a feeling of connection to something larger than oneself that is present even in a moment of great pain and loss. And so I propose that it is the sense of connection, of one-ness that is at the common core of our holy moments. Merriam-Webster tells us that the root of “holy” comes from Middle English, from Old English hālig; akin to Old English hāl whole “healthy, unhurt, entire” To me this is the essence of the experience. For me the archetype of a holy moment is as Alice Walker describes it in her book “The Color Purple”

“One day when I was sitting quite and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it come to me: that feeling of being part of everything, not separate at all. I knew that if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed. And I laughed and cried and I run all around the house.”

For Walker’s protagonist, there is no act, no parting of the red sea, not even the beauty of a wood drake that foretells the experience of something holy, just the spontaneous knowing of the one-ness of all living things.

The wholeness of such an experience is not necessarily that I myself feel whole- for me it is the realization that the whole is larger than myself. I can feel this in a moment of deep connection with another person, in a moment of wonder as the “wood drake rests on his beauty in the water” in which I feel myself part of the eco-system that surrounds me. I can feel this deep connection with my community when we make our hope manifest in real actions in the world. Whether it is music or a brilliant theorem that awakens this sense in us, the common thread is that our sense of what it is to be alive expands. It may be “good and righteous” as the definition of Holy suggests. Such a moment may be filled with power or beauty – filled with the Spirit of life as it were.

As for the character in the Color purple, such a moment of expanded awareness often comes as a surprise. I think it is in the nature of such experiences to come unbidden. I don’t know why- maybe it’s like what scientists are learning from quantum physics, that the gaze of the observer changes the path of the observed, or more colloquially, “The watched pot never boils.” But it is possible to cultivate such experiences, practicing that “trick of sight” that allows us to see the holy in the ordinary. Many religious traditions seek the powerful experience through preparing by fasting, or extended meditation, by right living, or by spiritual practices. They are cultivated by remembering, as Wendell Berry does, to search out the quiet of wild places. (The poem I read earlier was published by Berry in a collection of poems written over 20 years of his Sunday morning walks through the forests and fields near his Kentucky farm.) The most critical element, however, is openness. Because it is easy to stay on the surface of things and not sink down into their depths, to give only the minimum of attention needed to complete the task at hand. The great American spiritual teacher Ram Das tells the story of a friend of his who would approach each person he met as a Bodhisattva, and interact with each as if they were an enlightened being. As you might imagine it changed substantively the quality of their interactions. We “Increase the odds” of something holy happening through our willingness to say “this person before me, this wood drake, this moment is of deep significance. I open myself fully to it.”

We can have this openness not only when we are at our best, but even in our lowest moments. In a way our despair, our pain can crack us open so that we are ready to listen for that which is worthy of devotion. Then the “direct experience of transcending mystery and wonder” crashes over us or whispers quietly in a calm and stillness at our center. It lets us know that even though we are broken in body, heart or spirit, we are not alone. We are not without power, or beauty or hope. These moments are like a precious gift. We cannot count on them coming right when we want or expect them, only be grateful when they do come. We can also return to those moments to remind us of the shining depths at the heart of life. They can become touchstones, reminding us to remain open for the holy in each moment.

Enough! (December 5, 2010)

2010-12-05T17:04:00.000-08:00

At this time of year, our whole consumer society is set up to make us itch for more. I mean, don’t you kind of feel like you should be shopping right now? The advertisements, the promotions, the coupons have been coming fast and hard, and I confess to you that I am a sucker for a coupon. I go into the store to replace the mittens with the holes in them, and I totally lose hold of my senses. Suddenly I’ve got my arms loaded down with good deals and sales. Sometimes it only takes the walk outside through the parking lot to come back to my senses. By the time I have my keys in the ignition, I suspect there will be some returns in my future. I know I’m not alone in this, because when I friend of mine posted on Facebook “I went to the store for milk and somehow spent $100” and he got almost 50 sympathetic comments on his status. It is just hard to say “Enough!”

Today, we turn to the wisdom of Buddhism to help us bring some sanity to the season, to return us to our senses as we inhabit a culture that encourages us to want more and more until it is too much.

It is said that the first truth given to us by the Buddha when he rose from his meditation under the Bodhi tree where he achieved enlightenment were the 4 noble truths. These are also the kernel, the most basic of teachings of Buddhist philosophy, and yet also the most advanced. The 4 noble truths are:
1. Thus is the Noble Truth of Suffering
2. Thus is the Noble Truth of the Accumulation of Suffering
3. Thus is the Noble Truth of the Elimination of Suffering
4. Thus is the Noble Truth of the Path that Leads Away from Suffering

So the first truth of Buddhism is that suffering exists. It is further analyzed this way in one of the longer sutras: “Birth is stressful, aging is stressful, death is stressful; sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair are stressful; association with what is not loved is stressful, separation from what is loved is stressful, not getting what is wanted is stressful.” And what causes this stress, or suffering? According to the second noble truth it is suffering is caused by carving. We “cling to a certain sense of existence, to selfhood, or to the things or phenomena that we consider the cause of happiness or unhappiness.” Or we have craving that things were not as they are. The word for Craving is Tanha, which literally means Thirst, but can also be translated as desire.

I think what happens when we encounter the American Marketing Machine, is that it speaks to our thirst, our craving. We become dissatisfied with what we have and long for more. But the Buddha is talking about not just thirst for superficial pleasures, but the suffering that comes from losing things we love, people we love, our health, it comes from realizing that someday we will lose our lives.

And he says, in the 3rd noble truth, there is in fact an end to suffering, which is good news. In the 4th noble truth he tells us that there is a path to follow to lead us away from suffering. That path is called the Eight Fold path. That is: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration. Obviously, if we are doing or saying things that are causing harm to ourselves and others, this will cause us stress or suffering. But the inner work we do with our own thoughts and how we focus our attention is part of that path as well. Cultivating mindfulness helps us retain our equanimity. It cultivates that “inner strength that allows us to be with things the way they are instead of how we wish they could be. Mindfulness practice does not involve trying to change who we are, instead it is a practice of seeing clearly who we are…”

But despite our best intentions, suffering and stress are inevitable. American Buddhist teacher Gil Fonsdel teaches that “It is possible to experience the inevitable pain of life in a straightforward, uncomplicated way….The suffering addressed by the Four Noble Truths is the suffering and stress that arises from the way we choose to relate to our experience. When we cling, it is painful. When we try to hold our experience at a distance, to push it way, that too is painful. We cling to or push away from our experience in an infinite variety of ways”
I propose that in this season of rampant consumerism, business, and dearly held expectations, I think cultivating mindfulness can help us come to a place where we can finally say “enough”. It is not through doing more that we will find that sense, because we know there is always more we could acquire, more we could do. To break the chain of wanting, the Buddhists tell us that we must turn not to more buying or more doing, but inward to our own minds. This is where the wanting begins, this is where suffering and stress arise. I know from personal experience that shopping never leaves me MORE satisfied than when I started. Does this ever happen to you? I go to the store for those new mittens, and realize that there is a new kind of scarf without which I am now itching to have? Now I am dissatisfied, I have another action item on my to-do list and my stress is increased, not decreased.

That example shows the most superficial kind of wanting. But the concept is the same for the big wants- I want a home to call my own. I want a partner when I am single. Perhaps I always wanted to have a child, but never had any children. But Says Buddhist teacher Gil Fonsdel, we can use our small every-day experiences to help us with the big ones when they come. He writes: “If we attend to the small ways that we suffer, we create a context of greater ease, peace, and responsibility which can make it easier to deal with the bigger difficulties when they arise.” [P. 13].

This is where mindfulness comes in. Mindfulness is the practice of bringing all your attention into the present moment. We don’t judge the present moment, we are just aware of it. If something happens that we don’t like, instead of saying “I hate long lines at the cash registers!” we notice the line. We notice our response to it. We observe the anger rising, but we don’t cling to the anger, we just observe it. When we find the “perfect” gift, we don’t get attached to that either. We notice what thoughts and feelings arise without clinging to them, noticing “excitement is rising, pride is rising” Because all things that rise also pass away. If we get too attached to our great prize we won shopping, think how much greater the suffering will be when we drop it on the way to the car and it breaks, or the person we got it for already has one.”

Says Fonsdel, “In mindfulness practice, we learn how to pay attention in the present in moment so that when suffering arises we’re able to notice it. We can take an interest in it instead of running away from it. We can learn how to be comfortable with suffering, so that we don’t act inappropriately because of our discomfort. Then we can begin understanding its roots, and let go of the clinging.” So as we are standing in the mall and notice the craving, the clinging, the stress, we breathe in and breathe out, observing each breath, observing our experience and our reaction to it, without clinging and without judging. We develop an inner observer which exists with equanimity. The more we practice, the easier it is to find that observer. The desire for a new smart phone is fleeting, but the presence of the observer, this will endure, can be with us our whole lives.
Mindfulness also helps us navigate the business of the season. There are an infinite number of actions we can take this time of year- so part of the challenge is to choose the “right action” -- actions which are going to be the best for our emotional and physical health, and for the health of our communities. We choose wisely which of the 100 activities are going to make the healthiest difference in our lives. And then once we have chosen, we mindfully inhabit those choices. Over the Thanksgiving holiday, there was one night where I thought “I’m so glad I passed up the opportunity to see that wonderful show, because I really needed a night home with the family” and there were other days when I thought “I can’t believe I scheduled a day where I have so much to do and visitors on the way” But on good days and bad days, I can be mindful and breathe.

The real danger is not that we won’t have enough time to “get it all done” over the holidays, but that we will not be present to the time we have. In his book “Miracle of Mindfulness” Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh writes about a friend who was a father of 2 small children who told the monk one day “I’ve discovered a way to have a lot more time. In the past, I used to look at my time as if it were divided into several parts. One part I reserved for [my son] another part was for [my wife] another part of r household work. The time left over I considered my own. I could read, write, do research, go for walks. But now I try not to divide my time into parts anymore. I consider my time with Joe and Sue as my own time. When I help Joey with his homework, I try to find ways of seeing his time as my own time. I go through his lesson with him, sharing his presence and finding ways to be interested in what we do during that time. The time for him becomes my own time. The same with Sue. The remarkable thing is that now I have unlimited time for myself.”
How do we have enough time in this busy season? we breathe. In… and Out… Each breath is my time. Each breath is enough. “Breathing in I calm my body” Breathing out I smile. Breathing In it is a pleasant moment. Breathing out is a wonderful moment.

It is very simple, but not easy. I challenge you throughout the holiday season, to remember to breathe. To continuously draw yourself back into the present moment. Not so that you can experience perfect equanimity, but so that you can just be. Observe anger and frustration as it rises and falls away. Observe joy and satisfaction they rise and fall away. Observe your wanting as you see the new car commercials on tv. Observe that thirst as you see images of happy families, and you know this winter is a time when your family is in crisis. Observe the wanting as you see the ornament your grandmother gave you and you anticipate your first Hanukah without her. Observe the good times too, mindfully, without clinging or judging. Observe the times you get caught up and forget to breathe, and choose to bring yourself back to your breath.

Thich Nhat Hanh talked about eating tangerines with is friend Jim. He said “Jim became so immersed in [his thoughts about the future] that he literally forgot about what he was doing in the present. He popped a section of tangerine in his mouth and, before he had begun chewing it, had another slice ready to pop into his mouth again. He was hardly aware he was eating a tangerine. All I had to say was, “You ought to eat the tangerine section you’ve already taken.” Sometimes we celebrate the holidays in this way. Young children give a perfect expression of this when the open one present after another without stopping to enjoy any of them, and when they are sitting in a pile of wrapping paper ask “is that all?” We adults often feel the same way about time. We are disappoint to find we will have only a short visit from our mother or grandson, and as they come to an end think “it’s a shame we didn’t have more time together” As Hanh says “If you can’t eat a single section, you can’t eat a tangerine” If we can’t enjoy one gift, one moment with a friend, one bite of Grandma’s apple pie, the holiday season will pass away without our ever having tasted it. But sometimes just one moment of connection with someone, one moment listening to the snow fall under the stars can be enough. This present moment is enough.

Silent meditation
“Breathing in I calm my body” Breathing out I smile. Breathing In it is a pleasant moment. Breathing out is a wonderful moment.

Endnotes:
1) http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/study/truths.html The Four Noble Truths: A Study Guide by Thanissaro Bhikkhu © 1999–2010
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism#The_Four_Noble_Truths
3)The issue at Hand: Essays on Buddhist Mindfunless and Practice by Gil Fronsdal p. 17
4) The issue at Hand: Essays on Buddhist Mindfunless and Practice by Gil Fronsdal p. 4
5) The Miracle of Mindfilness! A manual opn Meditation Thich Nhat Hanh Beacon Press 1975 p. 2.
6) The blooming of the Lotus Thich Nhat Hanh
7) The Miracle of Mindfilness! A manual on Meditation Thich Nhat Hanh Beacon Press 1975 p. 5
8) The blooming of the Lotus Thich Nhat Hanh

Morality and Politics (November 7, 2010)

2010-11-10T09:24:00.000-08:00

Morality has become kind of a dirty word these days. It smacks of nosy neighbors trying to see past the hedge into your bedroom window. But I think it is a word we should not give up on. Morality means relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior -- thinking about what is good and bad. But maybe that still feels uncomfortable for us as a culture; maybe we think of ourselves as a post-moral culture, and “right and wrong” as outdated. I know we often like to use the word “ethics” instead, as somehow more humanist or scientific, but actually ethics are just a system or set of moral values and issues. For example, in the Buddhist tradition “non-harming” is a moral value, and falls within a whole set of Buddhist Ethics. When it comes to Ethics in our own life we have a choice- we can observe a an ethical code grounded in a tradition we trust, or we can use community standards and laws. As Unitarian Universalists, we have our common principles, and a tradition of ethical action to guide us. We don’t have a clear set of rules for every situation, but a set of principles to help us find our way. For example, our principles don't tell us we can't kill, but if we truly “affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person” and “respect the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part” then some kinds of behavior are “right out.”

Laws also help us stick to our shared ethics as a society. They clarify what behaviors are clearly crossing a line that our society has agreed upon, and back them up with our legal system. We have started to notice that the law doesn't really help us in all areas, so when we encounter murkier ethical areas, our religious community helps us clarify our highest ideas. It's right there in our mission which is “to provide a forum for liberal religious expression in an atmosphere which encourages spiritual growth and ethical living.” For example: we as a congregation and as a movement have spent a lot of time this past year thinking about the ethics of eating, so that we can live out our principles. We have noticed that there is a huge gap between what the law allows us to eat, and law around how food is produced, and what we believe shows respect to the interdependent web of existence. As a community which encourages ethical living, it's not enough for us to say “do what you want as long as you don't break any laws.” We call ourselves to something higher, knowing that sometimes our own integrity and principles can call us to be leaders in creating a just and compassionate world, when the law is slow to respond, or is downright unjust. IN the same way that we cannot assume that whatever is legal is moral, we must not assume that social norms describe what is moral. Sometimes our community standards do help us keep track of what is ethical. If you park in a handicapped parking spot without a permit, even if you don’t get a ticket, you are going to get a lot of dirty looks. But segregation was socially acceptable in the southeast even after it was not longer legal. “Everyone else is doing it!” didn't even fly with your mom when you were in high school.

Morality is about doing what is right, not what you can get away with. I have a bumper sticker on my car that exemplifies this point: it says “A Living Wage is a Moral Value.” The law says that employers have to pay their employees $7.25 per hour. Now it happens that the Tompkins County Worker's Center where I got this sticker learns with surprising frequency of folks who aren't making that $7.25 for some reason – this is called wage theft, it is illegal and a fine can be levied by the Department of Labor. You might get voted “Goat of the year” by the worker's center if you are guilty of wage theft- you are violating not only the law but societal norms. But if you do the math, you will find that people living in Tompkins County cannot actually live on $7.25 an hour. The Credit Union has calculated that in order for workers to be able to provide for their basic needs, a living wage is $11.11 per hour. And there is a group of employers in Tompkins County who are committed to being moral leaders around this issue- even though they could probably get away with paying folks minimum wage. They have decided the moral thing to do is to commit to paying this higher wage.

Now in American Ethics, there is another “guiding hand” at work - the “free market.” If you hear folks talk about the free market long enough, you will realize the faith folks have in the market is like that which generations past had in the divine. “If we just have faith in the market, and trust in the market, and let it do its work our lives, everything will turn out for the best” we are told. We have a similar faith in technology- that it will lead us onward and upward forever. In his analysis of agribusiness and the academic fields which supports it Wendell Berry writes: “They have no apparent moral allegiances or bearings or limits. Their work thus inevitably serves whatever power is greatest… Lacking any moral force or vision of its own.” [Berry p. 156]. The market is just a tool, like money is just a tool. It is only as good or bad as the moral vision which guides it. It does not reflect the whole of life. It does not reflect the love and care we give to one another. It does not reflect the health of the earth. It does not reflect the strength of our communities, or the sustainability of our futures. It does not reflect awe and wonder, or beauty or justice or even truth. I submit to you that the market is not an appropriate moral center- profit, money is not the best thing to put at the core of who we are as persons or as a society. And when we ask our government to put this at the center of value, there will be no morality in government.

Because what we put at the center of our own life, at the center of the ethical system we use to guide our life must have a broad glance. Compassion, that’s a pretty safe choice. A Buddhist Monk once explained that compassion is something all persons must hold on to until the moment of enlightenment, even when they have relinquished everything else. If you put compassion at your center you are bound to make sure that not only your life but those around you will be respected in the living of your life. There are other values that are worthy too- beauty, justice, truth but you can see how easily they can go awry if compassion, if respect for the inherent worth and dignity of each life, and of the interdependent web are not there to guide their unfolding. Even Justice as a guiding principle could be wielded like a weapon if not paired with compassion.

In all the ancient religions of the world, I have yet to encounter one that put money at its center, at it’s heart. I believe the reason we see such a fuzzy moral center in our political life is because we have for too long abdicated our own moral responsibilities to market, as if had a heart and a soul and was looking out for all of us. As if the choices we make don’t matter. As if we are all just tumbleweed blown about by its winds. I say, it’s time for us to put a stake in the ground, no better- a tree. Let us sink our moral roots deep into things that really do matter, really do endure. Like this religious tradition- it has turned out plenty of heroes worth emulating- Susan B Anthony, Clara Barton, The Waitsil-Sharps who personally helped evacuate hundreds of persons during the Nazi occupation before WW2, and so founded our UU service committee. Beacon press, which has been a voice of truth even when it had to choose between that and profitability. Linus Pauling who was not only a Nobel prize winning scientist, but also an activist. And when it comes right down to it, there are a lot of ethical, principled people in this room whom I admire deeply for the integrity with which they live their lives.

Our roots must not only go deep in to the wisdom of the past, but out into the neighborhood, into the community. There is more and more research to suggest that trees connect and even share resources through their roots and through the mycorrhizal fungi that links networks of trees below ground to share nutrients and water among them. This connection enhances their chances of survival, and of regeneration . Now imagine the strength of a trunk that has grown straight and true, that won’t fall in the first storm. That straight trunk is like our own integrity, how we grow ourselves according to our moral center. From there we can grow all kinds of leaves and branches, changing season by season, taking in the nourishment of the sun and shaping the winds that pass through the canopy, but by growing straight and true and sinking our roots deep and wide, we become people of character.

It’s easy to say “everyone does it” or “it’s legal” but it is often hard to ask ourselves “is it moral?” and “Is this compassionate to my community and to future generations?” Brian and I share a disappointment that so many of our political leaders today do not seem to be moral leaders. I think it is time for us as people of integrity, as people of character, to change the conversation -- from one of mud slinging to one of integrity. Let us provide the moral leadership that seems so absent in our world today. Let us raise our children to be leaders with integrity, and let us continue to support one another in this small community as we which encourage one another to spiritual growth and ethical living.

A Spooky Universalist Halloween Story (October 31, 2010)

2010-11-01T09:33:00.000-07:00

I want to tell you a family secret, a secret the Universalist historians don’t want you to know. Have you ever seen a movie where a bunch of well dressed old-timey people are sitting around a table holding hands while a medium calls on the spirits of the dead: “rap on the table if you can hear us” the medium says. Well, chances are that at least one of those folks at the table were Universalists. In fact, there’s a decent chance the medium was a Universalist, maybe even a Universalist Minister. Then you know how later in that movie, someone will say, “Bah, this is hogwash! You’re tapping on the table yourself!” Chances are that guy was a Universalist too.

You see, back in the 1800s there was a new religious movement sweeping the nation- it was called spiritualism. Now it was nothing new for folks to have experiences in which they understood themselves to be having visions of those who had died, or to have communications with celestial spirits. It seems to me that over the past few thousand years of western culture, depending on the current fashion, these visions have been treated either as demonic and evil, mystical, or signs of mental illness. It was generally the position of Christian folks before this time that all voices or visions were demonic; so most folks did not mention their experiences to any but a trusted friend. But in the mid 1800s several different persons, such as the Rev. John Dods, Universalist minister, began to speak of their experiences.

As a 13-year-old boy, Dods had seen a vision of his father, who had died 2 years before. His father said “The spirit world was not what people supposed- that great darkness and error hung over the religious world – that the sects differed as widely from the truth as they did from each other – but that a new era of light was soon to dawn on earth.” When Dods told his family, they laughed, and when Dods was next visited by his father, the vision advised him not to tell anyone about the visits saying “The world is not yet prepared to receive them” And so Dods hid his experiences for many years, though they caused him to re-think his conservative beliefs. Dods beliefs changed particularly about the fate of souls after death, since the ones who appeared to him seemed glorious, not suffering in hellfire as his old theology would lead him to believe.

In 1824, the “hauntings” began. “Sounds like the striking of heavy stones forcibly thrown against the building, rumbling sounds, explosions as of a cannon near the house, violent shakings of the whole building, the movement of various articles of furniture, even to that of a bed with a heavy man upon it, across the room, with great force.” Even relatives and visitors noticed the strange happenings “One of the curious gentlemen visitors encountered something like an invisible cannon ball, which fell from the ceiling; rolled, hopped, and bounded about the room, up and over the furniture and careening off the walls; and then hopped up on a bed, where the apparent depression of its weight on the bedclothes moved from the head to the food of the bed. A gentlemen in the room walked towards the bed… but one of the company caught hold of his arm, and said ‘Do not touch it for your life’ It then dropped on the floor, and rolled out of the side of the house.”

So it was his experience of these visitations, or hauntings, that drew Dods to convert to Universalism and to become a Universalist Minister. To Dods these hauntings were “Evidence of a providence whose saving grace extended to all” Then in 1836 Dods saw an exhibition of the French Mesmeric Charles Poyen St. Saveur. He became enthralled both with mesmerism, and with electricity, which was considered a related field. Remember, the study of electricity was an exciting new field in the 19th century, and by the second half of the century, the field of Electrical engineering was emerging, with such greats as Thomas Edison turning this field of study into a viable electrical light bulb in 1879. Dobs believed that “Electricity was the body of god, and all spirits God’s emanations.” He worked for a while with the theory that these visions were actually an electrical or mesmeric phenomenon- that they were in some way all in the mind, and worked for years to prove his theory, until in the 1850s a new series of spirits revealed themselves to him, He became a speaker and preacher in the field of “electrical psychology” just as the brand new spiritualist movement was emerging.

What is spiritualism? It was a movement growing out of Christianity that in some ways thought of itself as a scientific movement. Science was going through some exciting revelations in those days; such luminaries as Charles Darwin were in the midst of their groundbreaking research. “[Spiritualism] treated even the spirit as natural phenomenon susceptible to scientific explanation and manipulation.” [p. 17]What if we could use science, use direct experience to prove once and for all the nature of God? What if we could use the brand new knowledge of electricity or speak directly with St. Peter to pose our theological questions to him directly? And in fact Spiritualism did seem to provide external validation of the Universalist idea that all souls could be saved, since many of the spirit messages were of the Universalist theology even when given by non-Universalist mediums. [p. 93]

This was at the time, the cutting edge of religion. And the churches in the area now called the St. Lawrence District were the hotbed of religious radicalism. Elmira, Utica, Glens Falls, Poughkeepsie, Canandaigua, Buffalo, Albany, Oswego, and Auburn are all congregations who play a role in the Spiritualist movement. Remember this was the heady days of the Abolitionist movement and women’s suffrage, and both Universalists and Spiritualists were active in these movements for justice. Their radical egalitarianism and sense that a new progressive theology was in harmony with their work for progress in the world. Dozens of Universalist ministers became spiritualist mediums or healers. They felt that Universalism had begun to calcify, relying on revelations from other generations. They felt that any generation could encounter new revelations of religious truth, and that the truth learned from interactions with the spirits would help them connect past present and future. They could use these modern spiritual techniques to help clarify religious truth, and guide us all into the future. Their visions were not only theological in nature, but often scientific, since they believed things of the spirit were subject to natural law. In fact, it was the spiritualists who were strong advocates for Evolution, often lecturing on paleontology and archeology during a spiritualist lecture. Some of the more conservative Universalists found this uncomfortable in their theology. What did this mean for the progression of human souls after death, if all animals were on a path of evolution?

Historian John Buescher in his book "The Other Side of Salvation" compares the early spiritualist movement to the early history of universalism, when pietistic small groups and study circles formed the core of the movement as the message was spread by itinerant preachers. Spiritual séance groups could be seen the same way, gathering in a circle in a member’s home, hands held around a circle calling on the spirits together. Buescher remarks that “spiritualism renewed the sense of the spirit that had begun to disappear from their faith. Heaven was not far way from earth; the spirit (and the spirits) was close by. Angels were busy in the world” Some Universalists found Spiritualism a natural evolution of Universalism. Others were not so sure- not sure how much to believe, not sure what to make of the séances and speakers they heard. Said Rev. William Allen Drew of the much-touted Rev. Andrew Jackson Davis, a spiritualist medium “His whole art is shown to be the art of humbuggery and nothing else.”

The Universalist church was split over these events. There was a strong reaction from the more conservative of our brethren. In a Universalist publication based in New York called “The Christian Messenger” Rev. Thomas Jefferson Sawyer proclaimed “They know themselves to be rank infidels, and yet persist in claiming to be Christians.” He said, “Let Universalists be on their guard” against this “duplicity “ and “Knaves” [41] He was one who called for all the Universalist associations to withdraw their fellowship from ministers who associated with Rev. Davis. And many did. It lead, in fact, to a time of creedal tests, if you can believe such things possible in our movement. In fact much of this debate happened here in our home territory; the New York Convention of Universalists voted that no minister could come from another Universalist district into their convention unless they “subscribed to it’s creed” [p. 60] And the Buffalo association of Universalisms adopted a creedal test in the early 1850s. Many Universalist ministers were either “De-fellowshipped” or withdrew from fellowship when their Convention adopted such creedal tests. Many went on to be freelance spiritualist lecturers. Some congregations left the association to become Spiritualist congregations. By 1948 Dod, the minister who experienced the hauntings in our story, was no longer in fellowship with his Universalist Convention.

But the Susquehanna Association of Universalists resolved “Several of our ecclesiastical bodies have established tests of fellowship hitherto unknown in our denomination, and in our opinion inconsistent with the freedom of human mind and the liberty of thought, speech and opinion.” A reporter in 1879 asked a Universalist Minster, who himself was a spiritualist and his wife a ‘partial medium,' and who estimated 1/3 of his congregation were spiritualists, “Why don’t you call yourself a Spiritualist” and her responded “I could not get a living, I have 4 children and they must be educated. Were I to leave my pulpit and become a traveling lecturer, what would become of my family?” [p. 119]

So why would Universalist clergy risk their livelihood with this movement? Universalist Minister Rev. Byron Brittan retorted on behalf on the spiritual camp that they believed “the granted old prophets, Jesus and his Apostles, absorb and monopolized all the revelations of God; and hence, that [all] we poor followers of the 19th century get is second-handed, stereotyped forever!” [p. 43] Theodore Parker was not a spiritualist, but was interested in the movement. He wrote about it “Every man bearing within ‘lively oracles’ the present witness of God.” “The Spritualists are the only sect that looks forward and has new fire on its hearth.” [140]

Other Universalist ministers took the route of trying to evaluate the rappings and furniture movement at séances. Some worked actively to expose frauds. Daniel Mason Knapen exposed local mediums that were found to be stealing jewelry and other valuables from those at séances. [p. 98] Rev. Charles Chauncey Burr toured denouncing spiritualism and “expose[ing] its adherents and practitioners as “weak, insane, deluded creatures.” 2 magazines expressed the poles of the movement The Banner of Light “made little effort to distinguish sincere mediums from deliberate frauds.” On the other hand the Religio-Philosophical Journal steered away from the more sensational phenomena like levitation and disembodied voices and noises. In the late 1800s they turned their attention to investigating séances to expose frauds. They championed a “more scientific psychical research” [p. 124]

There are 2 themes I see in all this. First, it reminds us of the perennial tension between religious establishment and novelty even within so radical a religion as Universalism within a couple of generations from its settling on these shores. Now they were instituting creedal tests, de-fellowshipping ministers, and refusing to rent their buildings to Spiritualists because they were not proper Christians. They expressed strongly that the bible was all the spiritual wisdom that any proper Christian needed. The spiritualists on the other hand, found the church had become stuffy and calcified. They were returning to the small circles of the early days of Universalism, where they could be comforted by their sense of connection to loved ones who had died. They were craving that “direct experience” that is our first source of our tradition today. They believed that a new generation could still discover new truth, and experience new revelation.

But even in the biblical times folks rarely believed the prophets and visionaries. How is a person to tell the difference between newly revealed truth and ordinary claptrap? This is our second theme, and it’s the theme I was trying to get at with my silly children’s story today. Sometimes those in authority refuse to listen to us, even when we are right, so how can we tell when the authorities are right and when we should trust ourselves? Whether that authority is the church, or a spiritualist telling of a vision she has seen. Or even, if we ourselves have strange visions, how can we tell what to make of them?

Many contemporary UUs have had powerful spiritual experiences they would be hard pressed to explain. Many folks keep these secret for fear of being judged. It is also true that many UUs have also been betrayed or hurt by religious experience, and so are skeptical of all such things. This is a particularly important tension for us as a movement today- to keep our minds open, while also guarding against “idolatries of mind and spirit”. I think this is a question that can never be resolved one way or the other. Instead we live into that tension, and keep our minds open and also questioning.

The spiritualist movement has largely been left out of our history books, even the history of our own movement. Seances are not so popular any more, and we no longer us the electrical engineering to try to understand the nature of god. We leave these unfashionable practices out of our story when we tell it. But surely the creedal tests, the de-fellowshipping of ministers and the loss of many Universalists from our movement left their mark on our history. Mediums and Mesmerism are completely gone from our religious tradition. But let us keep the wisdom we gained from that part of our history - the lesson about the importance of not letting our movement become calcified and rigid. Let us be open to new revelation, and let us be wary of humbuggery even as we are open to new truth.

Keeping the Sabbath (October 17, 2010)

2010-10-17T14:27:00.000-07:00

When I was in 2nd grade, I went for a while with my Friend Suzanne to her Presbyterian Sunday School. That year the class was studying the commandments, (we were awarded a scroll if we memorized all 10!) I was a little put off by the commandment to keep the Sabbath. I was raised in a solidly Humanist UU church, and was suspicious of anything we were supposed to do because God commanded it. It was a time when Pennsylvania’s blue laws kept stores closed on Sunday, and this seemed inconvenient and silly to me.

Then I got a job. It only took one Memorial Day shift, sitting in an empty restaurant while my family went to a picnic, mentally adding up the $1.67 an hour I would make while the tables sat empty to make me realize that I would gladly eat at home a couple of days a year so that waiters and waitresses could have a day with their families. When that national department store chain advertises that it will be open on Thanksgiving Day, I don’t feel grateful that I get some extra time to shop; I feel sympathy for all the staff who will be required to work instead of taking time with their community.
But this is not the message we get from our culture. You are almost never going to hear your boss or client say; your life has become too focused on doing, go rest and renew yourself. It is easy for busy-ness to fill up every nook and cranny of our lives if we don’t carve out time for rest and renewal. So it is time to ask ourselves- do we believe that rest has value? Do we believe that our quality of not only our own lives, but of our society improves if we take at least one day a week for renewal and reflection?

We live in a culture that values profit and productivity very highly so to answer those values in their own terms I offer you some wisdom I learned during a Franklin Covey time-management seminar. It turns out that leaving one’s desk for lunch increases productivity for the afternoon. They also claimed that productivity drops off at the end of an 8 hour day. And I believe it. We can rest knowing that time away from work increases the quality of our work, but that also misses an essential point, because I believe there is more to leading a full and balanced life than work. Things like healing, connecting, learning, reflecting are higher functions on Maslov’s hierarchy of needs. They come long after eating, drinking, and running from tigers. But these are the things that turn surviving into living. Robert Reich, form secretary of labor under Bill Clinton, believes that one of the 3 fundamental principles of our democracy is that people have the right to develop themselves. William Ellery Channing, one of our Unitarian forefathers also held that self development was a basic human right. It is part of our liberal religious heritage to believe that we are called to grow, learn and become our best selves.

So I try to set time aside bringing balance to my life, but it takes a conscious effort. It’s hard to patiently wage a Pokemon battle with my son when the energy of busy-ness is still driving me like an inertial force. That’s why this morning I want to turn to the wisdom of the World’s religions, the 3rd source of our UU Tradition, to help us find our own way to create space for stillness and renewal in our lives.

The famous commandment which guides the Jewish Shabbat tradition is found in Exodus and says: "9Six days you shall labor and do all your work. 10But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns." So conservative and orthodox Jews set aside the time from just before Sundown on Friday night until just after sundown on Saturday evening. They set aside that time for rest and for “Sacred Assembly.” This is a time where you not only don’t go into the office, but refrain from "all and any kind of creative 'generative' endeavor, changes to the environment or any object" because on the 7th day God refrained from God’s creative work. There’s a list of 39 such activities, like writing, plowing, building, sewing, or kindling a fire, I think it’s interesting despite all those prohibitions, the Sabbath is also a feast day, a day of celebration.

Terry Goldstein, who wrote the first of this morning’s readings, made a choice to observe the Sabbath, and has built her life around that. And I wonder, would you believe me if I told you that your religion offers this commandment in the same spirit? As a religious and observant Unitarian Universalist, you have the same authority to take time to reconnect with others, with yourself, with the earth (and for the theists, God as well). Could I give you the courage to say to your boss “as part of my religious observance, I will no longer be calling in to check messages or e-mail one day a week. I will not be available for meetings or overtime on that one day.”

A few years back when my Junior High class was studying Islam [through the neighboring faith curriculum], they had a chance to speak with a Muslim man and ask some questions about his life and faith. The students and teachers were all struck by the fact that this observant Muslim prayed 5 times a day, every day. One of our bright children asked “What if your boss didn’t let you stop work to pray” and the guest responded “I would have to find a new job.” This man believes that his religion requires him to take time every single day to pray, to reconnect if you will. He takes this assumption as a basic given in his life, and shapes the rest of his life from there.

Not long ago I was reading Nadine Gordimer’s novel “The pickup” and was struck by the religious observance of the mother. When she is in prayer, the household knows not to disturb her. It strikes the protagonist as it struck me- those times of prayer were probably the only moments of quiet in the life of a mother of several children. 5 times a day she could count few moments of quite reflection, for that which was most holy to her. No one would tell her she was being a bad mother, but a good Muslim.

If we Unitarian Universalists had the courage to set time aside, how would we use it? Shopping and mowing the lawn are definitely not in the spirit of these religious practices.

I consider the practice described in this morning’s reading by Tich Nhaht Hahn. He doesn’t mention it, but it seems to harmonize with a Buddhist observance called Uposatha which has been observed since Gautama Buddha's time (500 BC), and is still being kept today in Theravada Buddhist countries. It occurs every seven or eight days, in accordance with the four phases of the moon. Buddha taught that Uposatha is for "the cleansing of the mind", resulting in inner calm and joy.

Hanh writes “you might do household work such as washing dishes, dusting and wiping off the tables, scrubbing the kitchen floor, arranging books on their shelves. Whatever the tasks, do them slowly and with ease, in mindfulness. Don't do any task in order to get it over with. Resolve to do each job in a relaxed way, with all your attention. Enjoy and be one with your work. Without this, the day of mindfulness will be of no value at all. The feeling that any task is a nuisance will soon disappear if it is done in mindfulness.” For Hahn, it is not so important WHAT we do on a day of mindfulness, but that whatever we do it, we bring our attention, bring our whole self into that very moment.

Over the past few years I have tried to find a Sabbath practice for myself. For ministers, Sundays are specifically NOT a day off, and Saturdays inevitably involve some final editing of sermons or memorizing stories. So when Nick was just a small child I took Fridays as my day off. We called it “special Ma Nick Day” because while his father was still at work, I would have a couple of hours of quiet alone time in the morning, then I would pick Nick up from preschool at around noon and we’d head off on some adventure. For a while we were in the habit of stopping at a coffee shop for mini-scones and milk, then driving over to the library that had a wonderful children’s section, and about an acre of gently rolling hills out back past the bronze statues of characters from “the wind in the willows.” I tried to avoid e-mail and business calls all day, even though this often meant people were quite exasperated with me when I tried to get caught up on Saturday.

Now that Nick is in Elementary School, I have to re-think how I want to set time aside. I thought at first I would make Monday a Sabbath, which is what most ministers do, but because I really need some quiet time alone to write a sermon, I just can’t give up that Monday writing. I’ve decided instead to try to really focus on that time from 2:30 when I pick Nick up at the Bus stop and dinner time as a time to turn off the computer, to help Nick with his homework and find a way for us to connect. We still enjoy a trip to the library together, and now that he’s older we have found new things to do. It’s working pretty well so far these first couple weeks of school. It provides an important balance to all those times I regretfully have to say to my son “not now honey, wait until I finish this e-mail.”
Then a couple of weeks ago my husband was out of town, and Nick and I were home together with no car and some gloomy fall weather. In my search for a Unitarian Universalist Sabbath I decided it was time to apply a piece of wisdom I picked up at this year’s general assembly of UUs, which had come to me in the lyrics of a song by Peter Mayer, the one who wrote that beautiful song “Blue Boat home” in the teal hymnal. As he sang this song the light of new wisdom dawned:

You can sleep till afternoon
Make some chocolate chip pancakes
Wake up with Einstein’s hairdo
And let it stay that way all day

You can be an unclean slob
Skip the shower, skip the shave
As if you don’t have a job
Not even a resume

On Jama Day…

Now I had always felt a little pretentious saying to friends or co-workers “I can’t do that today, I’m observing the Sabbath” Because UUs don’t have a specific Sabbath tradition, and I felt like maybe I was culturally appropriating a neighbor’s traditions. But Jama Day I knew in my heart was a holiday I could observe. Not every week, mind you, but maybe a couple of times a year:

Read a book by Dr. Seuss
Play canasta, play ping pong
Make a list of jobs to do
Then do none of them at all

I want to tell your our jama day was awesome, even though we did put our jeans on and walk to the park when the sun came out. And when my friend called to see if I wanted to come help can some tomatoes, I said without any fear of pretension or cultural appropriation, “I promised Nick we would have Jama Day” The friend completely understood.

Work, whether paid or unpaid, is important. Each dish we wash, each time we diaper a child, we help create this world we share. But as the Judeo-Christian creation story models, after 6 days of creating, comes a time of rest. This is part of what it means to live a balanced life: work and rest, action and reflection. Whether we follow the Sabbath laws in Exodus and Leviticus, or take time each day for meditation or prayer, Whether we set aside time for mindfulness, or create something unique in keeping with our own natural rhythms for health and balance, what is important is that such a balance is a part of our lives. As the great poet Wendell Berry writes:

"Then workday
And Sabbath live together in one place.
Though mortal, incomplete, that harmony
Is our one possibility of peace."

Called to Justice (October 10, 2010)

2010-10-11T12:24:00.001-07:00

[Note- this reflection was present along with 2 given by lay-leaders in the congregation]

I suppose it began for me one spring day when I got home from shopping at the Target, and began unpacking my purchases. I couldn’t believe the volume of waste- the amount of packaging I pulled off everything from moisturizer to my son’s new toy was more than 3 times the volume of the products themselves- and I don’t mean the bottle the moisturizer was in, but the plastic shelf hanger that the bottle was in that the moisturizer was in. Or course this was something I had probably experienced many times before- but on this day it just made me feel bloated with waste. I felt guilty and impotent.

This was in the time right before we invaded Iraq. There were some massive marches in San Francisco, and I felt powerfully moved to participate. I taped anti-war signs to my son’s stroller and off we headed. He was completely overwhelmed, poor thing, by the energy of 40,000 people who were, frankly, full of righteous indignation. I had to carry my 2 year old in my arms for the whole march because he didn’t feel safe in his stroller. Thankfully I had found the UU contingent, and a friend pushed the stroller the whole way so I could carry Nick.
When I got to church the next day, a long time activist explained that organizers of that march often had kind of belligerent-feeling rallies, and that I might check out the upcoming march by the local peace center. It was there my son and I found a woman sitting on a quilt with a hand lettered sign “story time for peace” There she sat with a cluster of preschoolers around her as she read stories about peaceful conflict resolution. It slowly dawned that even though I was the mother of a toddler I could still find ways work for justice.

I craved my own sense of calling- a cause I felt passionate about, for which I had the means to respond. I remember standing in line at the Subway sandwiches and offering a inglorious plea to the universe “please help me find a calling of my own.”

It started with those plastic packages, and turned into canvas bags. I made a resolution that I was going to bring those darn canvas bags to the store every single time I went grocery shopping, and if I left them in the car, I would walk back and get them no matter how far away I parked. I joined the green sanctuary team just being formed at church. I chose for my sabbatical the University of Creation Spirituality, where I could study a theology that had sustainability and justice at it’s heart: I knew it would be hard to make the changes in my own life unless the work I was called to do would was grounded in my own sense of love for the earth, grounded in my own deep beliefs and values, and in the same sense of motherly protection I felt for my own son.

Bit by bit I noticed that the environmental movement was a good fit for me- because, for example, I like long-term thinking, and really there is no movement that thinks more long term than the environmentalists. Moreover, there were ways for me to take action while still being a good mom. I made a vow to stop buying individually wrapped cheese sticks and renounced bottled water. We instituted a monthly program at the church called “Cool deeds for kids” in which all our children and youth would spend their RE time together learning about an issue and then doing something to help with our own hands. That might be making bag lunches for the local homeless shelter, or making models of erosion and permafrost in baking tins, then writing letters to our senators to ask for funding to save the disappearing village of Shishmaref Alaska.

I heard Julia Butterfly Hill say once that really there is only one movement. The anti-war movement and the environmental movement are not 2 separate factions vying for our time. We prevent wars when everyone has clean water to drink, when we reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. And war is incredibly destructive to the environment, destroying ecosystems and agricultural lands for generations. Nick and I kept attending our local peace marches as the war began, and when someone said “they are cutting down the boreal forest in Canada to print catalogs” I heard that call too. We held a “Cool Deeds” about reducing and recycling paper, we changed the paper policy through the church board, and I started a personal practice of writing letters to every mailing house that sent me a catalog to explain the issues and ask to be dropped from the their lists.

At the beginning, each time I heard the call it was like following a thread in a mystery as I looked for the work that was meant for me. Today my e-mail in-box is stuffed with calls to action every morning, and I have to pick and choose which call to answer. I feel bad that I can’t be at every lobby day, but I no longer feel guiltily and impotent. I have my work, and part of that work is leading a balance life with my family. I am proud to be part of of the Community Shale network, and that some of us will be headed to Syracuse on October 30 to present a picture of what it’s like in a county where drilling is a reality to folks in New York who are at a critical point in legislative decisions that will have ripples for many years. I still carry my canvas bags to the grocery store, and have switched to cloth napkins and locally laid eggs.

Rev. Rebecca Parker, one of my seminary professors, said in her childhood Methodist home she was taught that if there is work that needs to be done, and you can do that work, that this is your calling. I believe that this world needs each of us, that each of us is differently called, and that that calling changes over the course of our lives. Even in our busy complicated everyday lives, there are ways for each of us to act for justice if we listen closely for the call. I invite you to take a moment quietly to consider how you are uniquely called to help create a more just world.

[moment of silent meditation]

Getting Right (September 19, 2010)

2010-09-25T18:11:00.000-07:00

These past 10 days Jewish people around the world have been celebrating the Days of Awe- the period from Rosh Hashana (the new year) to Yom Kippur (The day of Atonement) During this time observant Jews are engaged in a process of worship, fasting, prayer, and tzedakah (performing righteous deeds and giving money to charitable causes). It is also a custom, as Paul mentioned last week, to ask forgiveness form anyone you have wronged. The great Maimonides said that when we hear the sound of the shofar during this time of year it’s call says, “Awake, you sleepers, from your slumber…examine your deeds, return in repentance, and remember your Creator.”

The focus of all these customs is the process of teshuvah, or repentance, whereby a Jew persons recognize their sins, asks for forgiveness, and resolves not to repeat their errors. This is not something one is expected to do in a single hour of worship, it is, in some traditions, a 40 day process culmination on Yom Kippur, which is a day devoted entirely to fasting and repentance.

We Unitarian Universalists do not have a ritual of our own for atonement, and I think this is sometimes problematic for us. We tend to question authority, and generally we feel a little uncomfortable with the idea that we need to ask God for forgiveness. But I think we kind of throw out the baby with the bathwater here, because surely none of us believe we have never done anything that needs to be forgiven. So this is a crucial question for us- a practical question not a hypothetical one, how do we ask for and receive forgiveness if we are atheist or agnostic, or just have one of those theological constricts of the divine that are more egalitarian? I recognized that same question in the song by the great country singer Lucinda Williams:

I would burn the soles of my feet
Burn the palms of both my hands
If I could learn and be complete
If I could walk righteously again

'Cause I want to get right with God
Yes, you know you got to get right with God
I think this is a basic human yearning regardless of our spiritual tradition or theology. Whether or not we believe in God, how do we get right?

So I turn to our Jewish neighbors, as one of the sources of our own tradition: “Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves” and “Wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life;” I turn to this tradition to see what wisdom they can offer our yearning to get right. I see a lot of wisdom in the ritual and tradition of the days of atonement, because I have found in my own life that setting aside time for intentional reflection, and engaging in ritual acts have the power to transform our hearts, and maybe the power to help us “get right” with ourselves and with the community of beings of which we are a part.

One tradition in particular is very moving to me. It is the tradition of Tashlikh which in the Hebrew means "casting off" and has been practiced since the 13th century. It is usually performed on the afternoon of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, but we are not too late this year, because it can be said up until Hoshana Rabbah, the seventh day of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, or this year September 29 on the solar calendar. In this ritual people throw pieces of bred into a body of flowing water to “cast off” all their sins from the previous year. The name "Tashlikh" and the practice itself are derived from the Biblical passage (Micah 7:18-20) recited at the ceremony: "You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea."

18 [God] does not retain his anger for ever,
because he delights in showing clemency.
19 He will again have compassion upon us;
he will tread our iniquities under foot.
You will cast all our* sins
into the depths of the sea.

Now I know I have to stop here and talk about the word sin. [I know, it’s the first sermon of the year and already I’ve mentioned God and Sin] As far as I’m concerned sin is just a really old fashioned word for any of those things that I’ve done that I regret, that I feel I need to seek forgiveness for, anything that keeps me from being right with myself or with the community of all beings. But I know a lot of people, probably some of the folks in this room, were really wounded by the word sin. Over the centuries it has been used like a weapon to make people feel judged, unworthy, cut off from God if they believe in God, and cut off from other people. I’m pretty sure doing science was considered a sin at some point, so was playing cards, or using birth control. So if you don’t want to use the word “sin” I don’t blame you. Unitarian Universalists believe that no persons is inherently sinful. We’re just human. Even if we try hard to create a world of justice and compassion, at some point we are going to do something that falls short of the person we want to be.

So instead of “sin” we might say “imperfections” I bet every one here could come up with a quick list of those things. I’ll tell you a couple of mine- I still eat conventionally farmed meat sometimes even though I know it’s not ethically produced. I didn’t vote in the primaries. I was more than half an hour late for the Shale Network meeting because I didn’t heed the detour signs. Everyone has this list of things they know they have fallen short. Some of those imperfections we are able to cast off pretty easily, but some really weigh on us; we know we are not acting as our highest self calls us to be, and we long to “get right.” I don’t mind using the word sin because it leaves the same bad taste in my mouth as the actions I live to regret, like saying an unkind word in anger to someone I love. I want to reclaim that theological language from those who wield it like a weapon. But I know that word is never going to feel right to many of you, so please feel free to use language that feels like a better descriptor to you.

But one way or another we will have an incomplete world view if we don’t have a way to talk about the theological idea of “sin” (whether or not we use that word) and we don’t know how to talk about “repentance” that is to say- how to get right once we have gone wrong. Without those ideas, I am going to have an impossible job of dealing with my human imperfections. I might just stick my fingers in my ears and sing “lalala” because knowing you are not right with yourself and your community feels bad, but if there is no way to talk about it, and nothing you can do to fix it, that’s even worse. Then it feels like that badness is part of me, and always will be. But if I could let go of all those things? If I could put down the weight of all my failings and screw-ups from the past year and start fresh

“If I could learn and be complete
If I could walk righteously again”…

We need to create a language and a process in our UU tradition to come face to face with our humanness, to own our imperfections and to get right with the community of beings. Let’s take a moment in mediation now to honor our human-ness, and our desire to get right.

Now Imagine if our congregation stood up and walked to the river and you had in your hands or pockets some bread crumbs each one representing some failing, some regret, imperfection, or disconnection in your own life. Feel the crumbs in your pocket, and then one at a time, you scatter a crumb for each one into the river that flows by our Sheshequin church. What crumbs would you wash away this year?

[pause in meditation]

Then you shake out your pockets to make sure you got every last bit (in some traditions folks observing the ritual actually immerse their whole bodies lest any crumbs be left, so imagine that if you choose, immersing yourself in the river and washing away every last crumb in the rushing water. [pause] Then you turn back to shore, walking with your community back to this sactuary.
As you return from this imaginary journey, notice if there is unfinished work for you to do. Are there people you want to apologize to? [pause] Are there actions you want to change in your life?

Though our mediation is over, this process of letting go, of getting right is a process that Jewish tradition allows days or even weeks to unfold. If you feel so moved, you might want to continue this work, maybe repeating the ritual we just visualized with real crumbs and living water. Participating in a ritual like this one is a way of putting more of yourself into a psychological process that you have chosen. Your intention to let go penetrates more deeply when those ideas are put into your mind but also your body. Many Jewish congregations hold a tashlich service formally together, but a ritual of letting go can also be quite simple and private. I encourage you to take a few quiet moments in these coming days and think about the things you would like to cast off, and maybe walk to a creek or river near you with a piece of bread. Cast your crumbs on the running water to help the process of letting go, of starting the new year with a clean slate, and of getting right with your self and with the community of all beings.

Resrouces:
“The High Holidays” http://www.myjewishlearning.com/holidays/Jewish_Holidays/Rosh_Hashanah/High_Holidays.shtml
“Tashlikh: A Rosh Hashanah ritual for the whole family.” By Lesli Koppelman Ross http://www.myjewishlearning.com/holidays/Jewish_Holidays/Rosh_Hashanah/In_the_Community/Tashlikh.shtml

Water is Life (August 8, 2010)

2010-08-19T18:52:00.000-07:00

Who owns the water? It sounds like a rhetorical question, doesn’t it. Like “Who owns the air?” or “How can you hold a moonbeam in your hand?” But as a culture that takes private property seriously, people know what I mean when I say that I own a little piece of land, of earth, on the south side of Ithaca. It means that I can say who comes and who goes, I can dig it up and move it around. I can plant herbs and harvest them, and no one will challenge me about whose herbs they are. So what about the rain that falls on my land? What about the wells that provide drinking water to residents of the city of Ithaca?

The water system is one of the most profound ways that we are connected one to another as living beings on this planet. We learned as children the science of the water cycle, that the water from the glaciers melts and runs down into creeks, and then rivers, into Marshes and lakes and oceans. We know that all water exposed to air evaporates and becomes the moisture in our air, clouds, rainfall, frost and the snow that melts in the spring to feed our creeks. You look at a weather map and see the great sweeps that air makes, carrying the water that evaporated off the Great Lakes, and off of my back eastward toward the Atlantic ocean. And so water is a profound metaphor for inter-connection. This is one of the reasons our annual water communion is so powerful. Once again this fall we will each pour our own portion of water into a common bowl as we regather in our sanctuary in Athens. And once those waters mingle, the nutrients, the organisms, the toxins that were brought by each become part of the whole.

I first became concerned about water justice when I was volunteering with The Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry in California which has embraced Water as one of their key for the past few years. They adopted a set of 7 principles to guide their work that I think will be helpful in organizing our thinking about this crucial set of issues.. The first is this:

• Water is essential for life, and holds spiritual meaning for many.

Every living being in our biosphere needs water, is in some part made of water. It is written in the Koran "We have made of water everything living." Water is such a fundamental building block of life, that every religious tradition that endeavors to sorts the world into its most essential elements includes water among them. It’s a powerful part of story, ritual and archetype in all cultures whether island or desert peoples.

Is water sacred to Unitarian Universalists? We might as well ask ourselves “is life sacred?” because water is the source and substance and sustenance of all life as we know it. Surely we must treat with reverence anything that sustains life, treat with respect that which when withheld causes life to wither and die. This year we have decided to include some earth science in our children’s Religious Education program. When our children here at church have a lesson about their local watershed, we should be ready to explain what is sacred about water, why we would spend time at church thinking about it, because water is so completely ordinary. But I believe that the ordinary everyday life is sacred, and worthy of our awe and our respect. I want our children to experience the joy and wonder of water, whether that comes from unlocking its scientific mysteries , or by running under a sprinkler. And I want them to respect water, because it cannot be separated from life -- our lives and the lives of the other beings who share this biosphere with us. I know of nothing more sacred than life.

A Second principle of water justice is that:

• Access to clean water for basic human needs is a fundamental human right and is essential for human health and dignity.

Just a couple weeks ago, on July 28, 2010, the United Nations adopted a nonbinding resolution that recognizes the human right to water and sanitation. The resolution “declares the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights.” Proponents of water rights were very careful to not allow the phrase “access to water” into the resolution, because that could imply that as long as water is for sale in your area the government has done it’s job. Instead they pushed for water itself as a human right.

The resolution passed by a vote of 122 to 0 with 41 countries, including the United States, abstaining. In a recent interview after the passage of the UN Resolution, Maude Barlow, director of the Council of Canadians, a citizen’s organization which has been a long time supporter of the right to water, spoke about the politics around those 41 abstentions this way: “…really, what you’re seeing is a split between those countries that see water as a public trust, although that wasn’t in the language of the legislation, but that see water as a public trust and a human right and that should belong to all, as opposed to those who are going to move to a market model. And I think that’s the truth behind what happened.”

Which leads us to our third principle:

• Water is a public trust and part of the global commons; it should not be treated as a commodity.

Are there some things so basic to life that they should be governed by different rules than those of private property? Like air? Like sunshine? Like water? Like our genetic code? I believe there are. The phrase that is used to describe this idea is “reclaiming the commons.” has argued that water isn’t a private good and shouldn’t be in any trade agreement.”

The idea of a commons arose in counterpoint as an increasing number of countries are moving towards water privatization, including New Zealand and Australia. In the United States a number of local communities fight the drawing down of their aquifers by water bottling companies like Nestle. according to The Economist (August 27, 2008) “Nestlé, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch and Danone consume almost 575 billion liters of water a year, enough to satisfy the daily water needs of every person on the planet,” Across the globe the world Bank makes water privatization a condition of loans and debit relief, and encourages sale of public water utilities to private corporations rather than helping fund public utilities. Between 2000 and 2003, 94% of World Bank loans for water and sanitation required recipients to sign contracts with private companies. As of 2006, Three European corporations: Veola, Suez and RW Thames controled over 70 percent of private water systems worldwide. Water has been removed from the “essential services” category and made a commodity available for profit.

This is what happened in Chualar, an agricultural community in Monterey County. There the California American Water Company (owned by RW Thames, one of those giants I mentioned before) bought the town’s water system in 2001. Local residents had been paying a flat rate of $21, but then bills jumped as high as $400 a month. Rebecca Trujilo, a local resident, reported that “All of a sudden we got a bill for over $100. Now our wages are pretty low. We earn $280, or at most $300 a week. If we have t o pay a bill of $280, will that’s a week during which we can’t eat, we won’t have money to buy food” Community members rallied, and presented community demands to the California Public Utilities Commission. As a result of this mobilization, Cal-Am went back to a flat rate, and CPUC supervised the private utility more closely with local community advocates.

Each time you or I buy bottled water, we are passively supporting water privatization. And if we’re buying it in the little sport-sized bottles we are paying more per gallon than we pay for gas. Companies like Nestle and Coke a Cola are buying public water rights (that’s my water and your water). They are within their rights as private property owners to overdraw the ground water, emptying local wells which provide drinking water to local residents, and then selling our water back to us at seriously inflated prices, in plastic bottles that some say will make us sick if we re-use them.

So what’s a thirsty citizen to do? Go back to your tap. That’s what most bottled water is anyway- tap water. Reconnect yourself to the water that comes out your faucet- each time you bottle your own you are making a political statement. It’s your right as a being on this earth to have access to clean drinking water. Do you have confidence in your tap water? A few minutes on-line at the EPA website could help. Find out where it comes from. If you don’t like what you find out, remember your right to have a vote and a voice- assert and reclaim that right.

This leads us to a third of the basic principles of water justice that :

• All people, including those in low-income and marginalized communities, must have meaningful input into water management decisions in their own communities.

Currently water is governed in very different ways across the country. In some states they are governed by “Special Districts” which are often controlled by real-estate developers and corporations. In some districts called “landowner districts” property owners are entitled a number of votes based on the number of acres they own. This means that while we all need water to survive, we can only participate in the democratic process if we own land, and our vote counts more depending on how much land we own. So next to the loud voices of industrial agriculture and developers, homeowners speak in a whisper and renters have no voice at all.

Here in Bradford County, I know that decisions about our water are made by the Susquehanna River Commission, and the Conservation Commission, but I’m going to admit my ignorance about where the water that flows out our taps at the Athens church comes from, and which public agency is responsible. So I hereby issue a challenge to you all here- the first person who can explain the source of and governance over the water that ends up in our church building gets a dozen homemade cookies. I will also award a cookie to anyone who can tell me the story of the water that comes out of the tap at your own home.

That will help us better ensure justice for our families and our neighbors, as Thomas Jefferson said “An Informed citizenry is the Bulwark of democracy” But what other beings who need water to survive? They also have no voice unless we give them one. There is a movement afoot to give rights to local ecosystems. The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, was founded right here in Pennsylvania, and is helping local governments all over the country pass laws granting rights to Mother Nature. In 2006 Tamaqua in Schuylkill County was the first in the nation to pass such an ordinance. Executive Director Thomas Linzey put it this way: "What we're advocating is a wholesale paradigm change: that Nature is not just property. We're saying natural communities have an inherent right to exist and flourish.”

This leads me to a 4th guiding principle that:
• The health, integrity, and stability of ecosystems must be respected and preserved.

Do we believe that other beings have rights? I do. I believe that water is not only a right for humans but for all beings. We have lived long enough with our 7th principle to know that the decisions we make about the path of a river effect more lives than our human lives. We also know that Our fate is inexorably intertwined with the other beings with whom we share this eco-system, but our laws do not reflect this reality.

For example, the California Water Code’s definition of “reasonable and beneficial use” acknowledges no intrinsic worth to such beings as the Salmon of the Klamath river. Hydroelectric dams along the river block salmon from 350 miles of spawning habitat. The once abundant Klamath salmon runs have now been reduced to less than 10% of their historic size. Some species, such as Coho salmon, are now in such low numbers in the Klamath River that they are listed under the Federal Endangered Species Act (ESA). As the health of the salmon population is threatened, so is the health and viability of the Karuk tribe of Northern California who have lived in and with the Klamath Basin for thousands of years.

A fifth of the basic principles of the Legislative Ministry’s water justice work is that :
• Public control and regulatory oversight are necessary to ensure the public's interest is protected.

Let’s go back to the water that falls on my yard. That doesn’t have anything to do with you, does it? It’s my land! But of course, all the water in this watershed, and in fact on the planet, is interconnected. This leads to 2 different kinds of concerns. First, anyone can put a well on their private property- ‘cause, hey, it’s my land. But the groundwater doesn’t pay attention to property lines. When we pump groundwater to sell for bottled water or to turn into fracking fluid, it can lead to an “overdraft” of groundwater- meaning that more water is pumped out of the ground than is replenished by rainfall or runoff.

Second, what you do to the water on your property doesn’t stay on your property. There are many examples of this, but one that has so many of us worried right now is what happens to the water used in hydrofracking. I just don’t feel confident that when known carcinogens and endocrine disrupters are pumped into the ground in the hydrofracking fluids that they will stay where we put them. Many of us in the congregation went to see Gasland over at the Elmira Theater and were shocked by film footage of folks lighting their water on fire. Apparently just a few days ago the cap blew off a water well in Monroe Township, and subsequent tests found methane in 3 wells at the private residence less than a mile away from a natural gas drilling pad. The DEP has investigated, and Chesapeake Energy is taking remedial action.
This is why we need to keep working to close the Halliburton Loophole by keeping the pressure on our federal legislators to pass legislation such as H.R. 2766/S. 1215 “The Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act of 2009 which has been stuck in committee for over a year. We have a right to clean, drinkable water, and need oversight to make sure our watershed stays pure.

The last of the UULM guidelines is this:
• Water conservation, responsible use, and stewardship should be a top priority for all.

This summer my son and I have taken every chance we could get to swim in the gorge at Treman State Park- it’s a favorite place of his. Last week as we were swimming there a worried look came over his face: “Mom, is the water from the Gulf Spill going to get in this water?” “No, honey” I assured him “That is very far away from us, it’s in a different watershed” (I didn’t want to worry him too much by talking about how water from the gulf would certainly evaporate and join the weather systems that move around the planet) “But let’s work to keep this and all the other creeks and lakes near us safe and clean” I replied.

Water is not a commodity, it is the very substance of life, it is sacred, and it is precious. We study our watershed, our water cycle knowing it offers as much wisdom about sustaining life as a sacred text. Let us make sure that justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Endnotes:
1. For a discussion of some water rights in Pennsylvania see: “FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS Public Rights in Pennsylvania Waters” by the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat commission http://www.fish.state.pa.us/water/public/faq_public_waters.htm
2. The Koran (21:30)
3. http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2010/ga10967.doc.htm “General Assembly Adopts Resolution Recognizing Access to Clean Water, Sanitation as Human Right”
4. Democracy Now July 29, 2010 “In Historic Vote, UN Declares Water a Fundamental Human Right” http://www.democracynow.org/seo/2010/7/29/in_historic_vote_un_declares_access
5. Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry, California, “UULM-CA Water Justice Guiding Principles”
http://www.uulmca.org/programs/water.html
6. http://www.emagazine.com/view/?5067
7. UUSC,Right to Water.” http://www.uusc.org/pdf/WATERfs_v3B_WEB.pdf
8. The Environmental Justice Coalition for Water, Thirsty for Justice: A people’s Blueprint for California Water p. 50
9. http://www.epa.gov/safewater/dwinfo/ca.htm
10. Ibid p. 47
11. http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_513236.html Pittsburgh Tribune-Review “Ecosystem rights move forward in Washington County” by Mike Cronin, June 19, 2007. More about CELDF can be found at http://www.celdf.org/index.php
12. THE PACIFIC COAST FEDERATION OF FISHERMEN'S ASSOCIATIONS “THE STRUGGLE TO SAVE SALMON IN THE KLAMATH BASIN“ http://www.pcffa.org/klamath.htm
13. Ibid p. 22
14. Thirsty for Justice p. 48
15. http://thedailyreview.com/news/methane-found-in-well-water-in-monroe-twp-1.942868 “Methane found in well water in Monroe Twp.” The Daily Review. BY JAMES LOEWENSTEIN.August 12, 2010

Forgiveness (June 6, 2010)

2010-06-07T11:07:00.000-07:00

We are all human. WE all make mistakes. Sometimes our mistakes cause inconvenience, discomfort or even pain to the people around us. Most of us carry around in our psyches our mistakes, and the injury others have done us, often for years and years. I know sometimes I will suddenly remember something that happened years ago, and will be filled with fresh emotion that belies how long ago it happened and how relatively small the event was in the whole of my life. Not only do our religious traditions ask us to forgive these errors and injuries, or as it says in the Lord’s Prayer “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” But doctors and scientists are now telling us that holding on to these errors and injuries can create physical illness and can delay recovery of illness and injury. In fact a recent study by the mayo clinic showed that people who focused on a personal grudge had elevated blood pressure and heart rates, as well as increased muscle tension and feelings of being less in control. When asked to imagine forgiving the person who had hurt them, the participants said they felt more positive and relaxed and thus, the changes dissipated. Moreover, forgiveness is the key to creating beloved community and long lasting deep relationships; you can’t be friends with someone for 20 years without forgiving often. But it’s not simple to let go of those old hurts, so today we want to take some time to think about forgiveness and the process by which it happens.

In her article “Moving Toward Forgiveness” Presbyterian Pastor and author Marjorie Thompson defines forgiveness this way. “To forgive is to make a conscious choice to release the person who as wounded us from the sentence of our judgment, however justified that judgment may be. It represents a choice to leave behind our resentment and desire for retribution, however fair such punishment might seem.” In forgiving, she assures us, we are not resigning ourselves to martyrdom, and we are not trying to excuse unjust behavior. We commonly hear the phrase “forgive and forget” but the two are not the same. To forgive and to heal we don’t need to forget the injury happened. Sometimes the experience that came along with the injury has brought us important knowledge and wisdom. What we want to let go of is not the memory of the event, but “its power to hold us trapped in continual replay of the event, with all the resentment each remembrance makes fresh.”

So let’s take a moment right now to think of a moment in your life to think of some time when you were hurt through another’s actions or inaction. Something that still makes your blood boil when you think of it, but I’d like to recommend that it be something not too fresh, something you’ve had time to live with for a while. [pause].

You may be surprised that there are a number of folks out there writing about forgiveness, from all different fields, and they have come to some agreement about how forgiveness works. I’m going to use the language of Robert Enright of the Forgiveness Institute today. The first step, which Enright calls the Uncovering Phase, is to take an honest close look at your feelings. Sometimes we forgive without doing this uncovering – we say “it’s okay, don’t worry about it” while our foot is still throbbing from being slammed in a door. Then we get home and realize that it’s getting all big and swollen, and our new shoes are ruined, and we may still be upset and resentful days later every time our foot hurts when we try to walk on it. So the Uncovering phase is where we really take an honest look at the “cognitive, psychological and spiritual impact of the injury.” Forgiving is not denying that any hurt happened, on the contrary, true forgiveness happens in response to our honest assessment of our feelings.

So take a moment with the injury you have chosen, to examine how it has impacted you. [pause] This process can take a while to really explore. If you are uncovering that time your friend slammed the door on your foot, probably a few minutes is all you need to really process it, but if it is a deeper injury, a more complex injury, it may take some time to really do all the uncovering you need to do to fully forgive. Maybe you want to plan to take some time later today or tomorrow to work more on this.

The next phase, Enright calls the Decision Phase, “in which the injured party has a change of heart and is willing to commit to forgiving the offender.” This is crucial. If we are not really sure we want to forgive someone, we are going to do a half-hearted job of it, and will find ourselves harboring those same resentments in years to come. Bring to mind the image you are working with today. Do you really want to forgive this injury? Are you really ready to forgive this? Is the relief of setting down the resentment worth giving up any desire for revenge or judgment?” [pause]

If decide that you are ready, the next step is the “Work Phase… Accepting and bearing the pain of the injury as well as reframing one’s perspective on the offender as to have greater empathy and compassion for the offender.” This is hard. That’s why it’s called the work phase. Often when we are wronged, we think of the person who wronged us as completely evil. In psychological terms this is called “splitting” because we are disowning our own capacity to do harm. We all have make mistakes like slamming the door on someone’s foot, or breaking someone’s favorite glass. We all have failed to live up to promises, I would even go so far as to say we all have in us the capacity to do violence. Because we are Universalists, we don’t believe that the world people is divided into good people and bad people, just people. As we do our work on forgiving, we are moving from “that person is evil” to “that person is human, and did something that caused me a great deal of pain.” This “work” phase is not a single act. In a way it is creating a new habit so that, when I think about my sore foot, I give up wanting vengeance on the person who hurt it, and letting go of judgment. Every time I think of that injury during this phase it is an act of will to say “I am choosing to forgive this injury, because it is not good for me to carry it around any more. I need to let this go more than I want vengeance.”

You know that you are done your work when you have that memory, and your blood doesn’t boil. You might feel sad, you can remember the hurt, but you don’t feel ready to go into battle against the person or who hurt you. See if you can recall any hurts from your past that are no longer charged when you think of them. Often, for example, when we become adults we are able to forgive some of our childhood wounds, because we realize adults are just people who make mistakes and bad choices or self interested choices, and we watch ourselves as adults making similar mistakes. This enables us to forgive our own parents and to let go of our judgments about some of the parts of our childhood that didn’t suit us.

The Final stage is the Outcome or Deepening Phase, “in which the injured person finds deeper meaning for self and others in the suffering associated with the injury; realized that one is not alone; and awareness of decreased negative feelings and of internal emotional release.” Another way to think of this is “learning something the hard way.” The wounds you bear have made you who you are today, but don’t keep you from being in community, and don’t keep you from having a whole and meaningful life.

I want to offer an example from my own life in hopes that this will help our discussion be more concrete and real. When I gave birth to my son, I had prepared for a home birth. I had done everything my midwife had suggested, taken the classes, read the books, done the exercises and felt I had really done my work getting ready. But the baby wouldn’t come, and eventually I was transferred to the hospital. As I checked into the hospital, frightened and exhausted, the doctors treated me like a delinquent and irresponsible child for having my prenatal care with a midwife instead of a doctor. I was seen mostly by student doctors, since I didn’t have an OB at the hospital, and midwives are not allowed to provide care in California hospitals, and it seemed that these students had not gotten to their unit on bedside manner. Finally, our whole birth plan went out the window, and I was wheeled to the surgery unit for a C-Section. Let me assure you I was filled with anger, sadness, and a sense of betrayal after that experience. I was angry at the hospitals, the doctors, the American OB system, my midwife and myself. It took years of work to let go of all that resentment, and forgive myself for not giving my son a natural childbirth. One day after a couple of years of working through all my issues, a thought went off like a light bulb: “Healthy baby, healthy mom.” What could be more important than that? Today when I think of how the doctors treated me, I take a deep breath and let it go. I don’t want to carry that resentment with me any more. I no longer think of the hospital staff as “evil” instead I can remind myself that they kept me and my son alive. Truth be told, whenever I hear the birth stories of my friends who had natural childbirth, I still feel a little sad that I will never experience that, and I still think the American Obstetrics industry and the laws that support it need to be changed, but that sadness, that hunger for societal change is just a part of my honest relationship with my past, part of letting go. Because that event undermined so many things I thought I knew, because it undermined even my theology, it took the help of with the help of friends, a few “art as meditation” classes and my spiritual director to weave myself back together into a whole person. But it finally did heal, and the marks it made on me, like the scar I have from the surgery I had that day, are part of the person I am today one a little wiser about how the world works.

Really, as injuries go, a hospital transfer during a home birth is dwarfed by some of the injuries our brothers and sisters have suffered. No one would blame a person whose loved one had been killed for holding that resentment, that desire for vengeance for the rest of their life. But some who have experienced grievous wrongs find the strength and wisdom to forgive even the unforgivable. When I hear of a mother or father whose child was killed standing outside the penitentiary where the one who committed that grievous crime waits on death row, and what the parents are calling for is to spare the perpetrator’s life, it is an amazing testimony about our power to forgive even the unforgivable.

And since we are all human, we all need forgiveness. So I want to ask you to set aside this injury you are working on forgiving, and search in your heart for something you need forgiveness for. [Pause]

Homer Ashby, a professor of Pastoral Care, hypothesizes in his article “Being Forgiven” that the steps for being forgiven are the same as those for forgiving. In the uncovering phase, we become aware of the mental, emotional and spiritual impacts of what we have done. We acknowledge that because of something we did, someone else was injured. A lot of us skip this step, because if we think we have done something that might have hurt someone else, it doesn’t feel good to think too much about it. But doing this uncovering might help us make the hard decision to seek forgiveness, and to enter the work phase. The work phase for seeking forgiveness, though, is where the main difference lies. Prof Ashby suggests that the work “might include a confession to oneself, to the person offended, or to a transcendent other to whom the offender feels a moral duty. Now, we have to be careful to make this a true apology. If we say “I’m sorry that you felt hurt by what I said” that’s not an apology, that’s an indictment of the other person’s sensitivity or psychology. A true apology is for our contribution “I am sorry that I said something that hurt you.”

Part of our work will include putting ourselves in the other person’s shoes, understanding how they feel and grieving with them if that is appropriate. Making amends is also an important part of this work- whether that means trying to “right the wrong that was done.” or changing your behavior so that we know we will not hurt that person, or other people, in that same way again. Taken all together, Ashby calls this “expressing repentance” – apology, confession, understanding the other’s pain, making amends, and changing behavior.

Here’s another important difference between forgiving and being forgiven- the person we have injured needs to decide for themselves when and if they are ready to forgive. Or as Ashby says “The offender must be willing to wait patiently for the gift of forgiveness to be given.” If you have done your work- by apologizing, empathizing, making amends, and changing your behavior, the choice is then up to the injured person. We have to live with the possibility that “we may never receive forgiveness from the person we offended.”

The final step is to receive forgiveness. If the person we offended offers words, a hug, a gesture of forgiveness, we must receive it graciously to bring closure to this cycle, which has the power to bring healing to both parties. The isolation of each is ended, and we feel that we are not alone.

Now sometimes, it would do more harm than good to seek forgiveness in person. Some wounds are so deep, that it would only open old wounds for the offender to approach the offended to ask forgiveness. And sometimes the person you’ve offended has died or is no longer in your life. In all of these cases, you can still seek forgiveness, but the process is internal, and so can be more difficult, because it is often harder to forgive ourselves than others. For people who believe in a higher power, they can ask for forgiveness in prayer or meditation. But for folks who are atheists, I think it can be really helpful to talk it out with someone you trust. Someone who can hold you accountable, help you make sure you are doing your work and not looking for cheep forgiveness, and help you let go.

In this month’s world magazine we heard a story from the childhood of the Rev. Patrick O’Neil : after being pushed into a snow bank by older kids, a neighbor came out to dry him off and offer a cup of cocoa and this advice “Patrick, you are angry at those boys for what they did to you. And it is natural for you to feel that way. But now – you must let it go. This day has other things to give you.” Many years later Patrick learned from his mother that the neighbor and her husband were both survivors of the Nazi concentration camps. With such a history she had a right to be bitter her whole life, but she made a different choice. She had found the deeper meaning to her life, and so had wisdom to offer this little neighbor child. This then is why we forgive, because when we lay down our hurts, our wounds, our mistakes, we can give more of ourselves to life, to community, to our relationships and to all that this day holds for us.

Walking with Thoreau (May 16, 2010)

2010-05-17T09:10:00.000-07:00

Reading:
“In the distant woods or fields, in unpretending sprout-lands or pastures tracked by rabbits, even in a bleak and, to most, cheerless day, like this, when a villager would be thinking of his inn, I come to myself, I once more feel myself grandly related, and that cold and solitude are friends of mine. I suppose that this value, in my case, is equivalent to what others get by churchgoing and prayer. I come home to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful. I have told many that I walk every day about half the daylight, but I think they do not believe it. I wish to get the Concord, the Massachusetts, the America, out of my head and be sane a part of every day.”
Thoreau’s Journal, January 7 1857

Walking with Thoreau
There is some debate about whether or not Henry David Thoreau was a Unitarian. Sure, he was baptized in the 1817 in the First Parish Concord, which BECAME a Unitarian church with much ado and scandal while Thoreau was growing up. And yes, he did go to Harvard, which was at the time home of the Unitarian Divinity School. And he certainly did fraternize with a number of Unitarians- Margaret Fuller (whom you will hear about next week from Chris) was a Unitarian, as were many of the Transcendentalists. Ralph Waldo Emerson, a Unitarian Minister, took Thoreau under his wing as the younger man floundered upon leaving college. He introduced him to other like minded folks, and encouraged publication of his writings in the magazine Margaret Fuller edited – The Dial. In fact, it was on Emerson’s land that Thoreau began his most famous project- 2 years, 2 months and 2 days of simple living in the “second-growth forest” just outside Concords Mass. It was called Walden.

But whether or not Thoreau claimed us as his people, the question we ask ourselves this morning is did his thinking, his writing, his living help us become the religious tradition we are today? Do they challenge and inspire us in our living? If so, then I believe we can claim him as a forefather of our movement.

Thoreau’s life asks the question: is it possible to live more simply? The children’s story we heard this morning is based on an argument between Thoreau and his friend which Thoreau wrote about in his book “Walden: or Life in the Woods.” It challenges us to think of the services in our lives that we pay for, and asks “isn’t a day walking to Fitchburg better spent than a day earning the money to take the train to Fitchburg?” Throughout Walden, Thoreau keeps this kind of accounting- illustrating how cheaply and simply one can eat, dress, even build a cabin to live in. Critics remind us, however, that it was on his friend Emerson’s land, 14 acres, that Thoreau lived those 2 years, which begs the question- how simply can folks live who do not have their own land, nor a friend with 14 acres? Moreover, who among us has the skills to build our own cabin, to grow our own food, make our own furniture? But still, through his experiment Thoreau has issued the challenge to all of us: “what do we really NEED to live?” What is essential, and what is dispensable? This is a question that many Americans are asking themselves right now. All those folks who pay for takeout because they don’t have time to cook their own meals, who buy new things because they don’t have time to mend the old, whose demanding jobs create a life where there is not time for much else. Thoreau’s example asks us to examine our lives and see if the time saved by convenience is worth the time spent earning wages to pay for those conveniences. Thoreau wrote in Walden that: "Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind." [39]

Now this Valley tends to be a little outside the main stream on this one I believe. Simple living is not such a hard sell here as it is in other parts of the country. Perhaps it’s because just aren’t that many high paying high-demand jobs here to go around, or perhaps it’s because this county still has family farms where people know how to do things themselves. Or maybe folks choose to stay here or to come to this area because they want a simpler life. Whatever the reason, when someone says over coffee hour that they are planting potatoes or putting up strawberries, or even building their own home, we think it’s cool. Through his writings like Walden Thoreau affirms the higher good of choosing such a life, lest we become dispirited, or feel that we have fallen behind the Joneses. I was getting grumpy the other day about having only one car- and all the choreography that entails - until my partner reminded me that we CHOSE to have only one car- and to live in a town where walking is possible ON PURPOSE, because it allows us to live our values in a way we were unable to do in the community where we lived before. Sure it’s easier to move into a house that’s already been built than to build a cabin in the woods with your own hands, but in Walden Thoreau holds up a vision of the importance and beauty of attempting such work ourselves. He writes “Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sin when they are so engaged?” [Walden p. 36] His writing reminds us why we make choices toward simpler living, and his example is a challenge to ask of our own lives “Why ride to Fitchburg when you can walk?”

A second challenge we find in Thoreau’s writing and living is this: Is it possible to live a live a life more connected to nature, to the wildness of things?
In his essay Walking Thoreau writes, “I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a sing day without acquiring some rust… I confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing of the moral insensibility, of my neighbors who confine themselves to shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months, aye, and years almost together.” [p. 9]. As we heard in our opening reading, walking for Thoreau is a moral and a religious pursuit. This he shares with the many Unitarian Universalists who have reported over the last century, that if they had ever felt anything that might be called a “spiritual” experience, it had happened hiking the side of a mountain, or on a brisk morning on the shore of the ocean, or just in a patch of sunlight in an ordinary grassy place. To Thoreau we are rejecting our religious imperative when we forget to just head out walking and lose ourselves among the trees. He feels some pity, and even disdain, for those of us stuck behind a desk in an afternoon.

I picked up that essay in the first place because I’ve recently become a fan of walking myself. There is something so empowering about walking. If you don’t have the money for a train, if your car runs out of gas, just putting one foot in front of the other can take you anywhere in this whole wide continent. Of course walking has about the lowest ecological footprint possible, and I find that I know a place so much better when I walk it than when I drive it. And there is some other intangible benefit- some kind of peace or grounding that comes to one on the best walks; a number of religious traditions honor walking as a spiritual practice. Thoreau reminds us that reconnecting with nature does not require any fancy gear, or an eco-travel vacation in Brazil, just getting up from behind the desk and putting one foot in front of the other, and seeing where your walk takes you, seeing what the out-of-doors is up to these days.

Thoreau also challenges us as a society- he challenges us to value wildness, in the land and in ourselves. It was kind of creepy to notice the change to this country since the time of Thoreau’s writing. He asks for example: “What would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall?” [p. 11] For him, a real walk is one where all evidence of civilization disappears from view. He writes with frightening foresight: “At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off… and walking over the surface of God’s earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman’s grounds.” [p. 16]

I wonder if he really knew such a day would come- when so many in this country could only walk in a garden or mall, when the walker has little freedom, little access to wildness. Thoreau saw this as a potential loss to our humanity, and Contemporary journalist Richard Louv has done some important thinking about the real consequences of living without access to what he calls “natural, self-organizing places.” In particular, he wants to know what will happen to children who grow up in a society where there are no wild places? A 2003 Cornell Study finds that “life’s stressful events appear not to cause as much psychological distress in children who live in high-nature conditions compared with children who live in low-nature conditions” [Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods, p. 49]

Terry Hartig, a Swedish researcher, has worked on various studies showing that Nature can “help people recover from ‘normal psychological wear and tear’ [as well as improving our] capacity to pay attention” In one study Hartig’s subjects did 40 minutes worth of tasks designed to wear out their direct-attention. Afterward one group was asked to walk in a local nature preserve, another walked in an urban area, and the final group sat quietly reading and listening to music. “After this period those who had walked in the nature preserve performed better than other participants on a standard proof-reading task. They also reported more positive emotions and less anger.” [Louv, p. 103]

Thoreau is as poetic in his emphatic praise of the virtues of the natural world as Louv is careful and scientific. Both challenge us to value wildness as individuals and as a society. They challenge us to preserve wild places for our children and for ourselves, before they are all deforested or landscaped and turned into soccer fields. “What would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall?”

Finally, Thoreau challenges us to be truly present, awake and alive. To Thoreau going for a walk- REALLY going for a walk involves being present in the moment. He writes “I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to Society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is – I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?” [Walking, p. 11] What a beautiful reminder to be present in our lives, to be present with whatever critters and plants and breezes we find on our path. Again Thoreau has a sense of moral imperative that we remember to be present with the natural world, and that it is worthy of our attention.

For myself, I am grateful to claim Thoreau as a prophet and guide on this journey. His ideals are woven throughout my own sense of what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist. His life is a challenge to us to remember how little of the things we buy we really need, and how deeply we need an afternoon outside. His story asks us to honor and advocate the wild places, so that our children and grandchildren can sometimes walk until society fades from view. As we journey with Thoreau, may we remember to be present in body and spirit. Shake off the village and return to our senses. “…dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful.”

Finding Abundance in Scarcity (April 18, 2010)

2010-04-19T09:07:00.000-07:00

Among my collection of beloved children’s books is one by Barbara Shook Hazen that helps me explain the economic downturn to children. It was written in the 1970s during the recession when so many were unemployed. The book is called “Tight Times” The boy explains that “Tight times are why we eat Mr. Bulk instead of cereals in little boxes. I like little boxes better. Daddy said tight times are why we went to the sprinkler last summer instead of the lake. I like the lake better.”

Economists say that we are living in tight times right now- this is the first time since Barbara Hazen wrote her children’s story that unemployment figures have gone over 10%. We’re no where near the 34% unemployment of the Great Depression, but everyone is feeling the effects of the tightest times in a generation.

When I went back to California I heard that unemployment there is up over 10%, my one friend has been laid off 3 times in 3 years. Another said that although being laid off was discouraging, she is using the time to focus on her 2 young sons and pause and consider the big picture in this next part of her life.

Living in tight times calls for us to stretch ourselves in 2 ways. The first is to be prudent and use our resources carefully. I noticed that during the tech bubble of the early part of the decade, what folks thought of as “ordinary everyday expenses” expanded with the bubble. People around the country thought the economy would keep growing forever, and grew their spending and borrowing as if it would. The fear and loss of this economic crash has taught us some hard lessons. Americans are saving more than they have in decades and recent changes to the credit industry mean that folks are using their credit cards less often I couldn’t find any hard data on this- but I bet more families are paying more careful attention to their finances than they were 5 years ago. I bet everyone in this room has a example of something they have done to tighten up their budgets during this recession. [A pause as people are invited to share aloud their experiences]

As the wise Ben Franklin said: Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without. Speaking for my own family, we have learned to cut back a little at a time. There were things we thought we couldn’t live without, but it turns out we can live without them just fine. Other things we really need we’ve found new ways to get. Learning to cut back is easier when so many of us are in the same boat. Reporters started doing stories on such topics as “how to save 30% on your grocery bill” NPR ran a series “how to make dinner for a family of 4 for under $10. Suddenly it’s become social okay to talk about cutting back and saving money. It’s okay to say no to something because of the price. Many folks have taken the opportunity to enter into a period of “fiscal fitness,” through a practice of voluntary simplicity, and others through unrelenting necessity. Either way, I don’t think those of us who have lived through this crash will ever look at money the same way again.

But sometimes these new habits make me feel kind of miserly. I like being fiscally fit, but I don’t want to just say “no” to everything all the time. So the other important lesson of “tight times” is how to continue to be generous and to live abundantly. Just because our economy has shrunk does not mean that the gifts of life on this earth are any less abundant. We know for example, that folks go hungry in this world. WE might think from this fact that there is not enough food to go around. But those who study hunger , like the World Hunger Education Service, say that the food crisis is not one of production- there is enough food on the planet right now to feed everyone. In fact down in Florida they are plowing under their strawberry crops they are so abundant. No, hunger comes not from scarcity of food, but from poverty. Douglas Boucher, author of The Paradox of Plenty writes that: “We see now that [combating world hunger] is not simply a matter of whether food is available in the market; people must have the money to buy it. In a world economy in which food is a commodity, poverty will lead to starvation no matter how productive agriculture becomes.” (p. 77 quoted in Ellen Davis) So making sure there is abundant food for everyone requires us to be creative when conventional ways are not doing the trick.

Some of you will remember back in January I talked about the return of African farmers and eaters to native plants. They are moving from Western crops like Corn and Soy to things that grow abundantly in their ecosystem, like spider plant, African nightshade and vegetable amaranth.

So the second discipline of living in tight times is noticing abundance wherever we find it. This week, for example, the tulips up in Ithaca are mad with joy at this particular balance of sun and wet and cool. It looks to me like there are about twice as many in my garden this year as last. In fact, nature is the perfect model for abundance. Says green designer William McDonough:
“Nature is nothing if not extravagant. Four billion years of natural design, forged in the cradle of evolution, has yielded such a profusion of forms we can barely grasp the vigor and diversity of life on earth. Responding to unique local conditions, ants have evolved into nearly ten thousand species, several hundred of which can be found in the crown of a single Amazonian tree. Fruit trees produce thousands of blossoms – an astonishing abundance of blossoms – so that another tree might germinate, take root, and grow. Birds, too, seem to have a taste for the extravagant; who could say the wood duck’s plumage is restrained?” (Sustainable Planet, p. 13)

Even during tight times, we can find wonderful examples of abundance and generosity if we are looking. I heard a story on the radio the other day that guy who is giving away $10 to a complete stranger every day for a year even though he himself was recently is laid off. He calls it “A year of Giving”

So let’s take a moment of silence to think about some places in your life where you have observed abundance recently. [A pause as people are invited to share aloud their experiences]

So scarcity is real, and though it is painful, it helps us be fiscally smart and strong. And abundance is real, and helps us live vital joyful lives. In these times we are called to marry the two together, to create a life both prudent and abundant. I experienced this in my recent trip to California. My partner and I had saved up some frequent flier miles back when we used to do more traveling, and planned a trip to see our old friends. As we got ready for our visit I worried aloud to my partner: How could we enjoy this rare and special visit on a budget? How could we keep from feeling miserly and ungenerous? He said “We’ll buy groceries and we’ll cook for our hosts” and so we did. Almost every night whatever friends were gathered would bustle around the kitchen taking our time over a home cooked meal. (My goodness Eric has a way with a dry rub when he puts his mind to it, my friend learned an amazing mole sauce when he was in Mexico, and I managed to fake a Strawberry pie one night in honor of the early strawberry season in California). We’d hang out until past our proper bedtimes talking or making music, until finally everyone collapsed on some combination of beds, air mattresses and sofas. It was one of the best vacations ever, and it sure didn’t feel like tight times.

One of the days it was raining pretty steadily outside, yet all the kids were out in it undeterred. A bunch of the younger kids were playing princesses under the awning, but Nick was nowhere in sight. I finally saw him, about 10 yards up the hill rain streaming off the hood of his raincoat. He was standing next to a tiny lemon tree, and had dared to pick a lemon, peel it, and taste it. When he caught my eye, he showed me the lemon, bit into the exposed flesh, and made the puckery face mouthing “Sour!” before taking another bight. The tiny tree had a hundred or so ripe lemons weighing down its branches, and I told Nick he could pick as many as he liked. This he did, returning to the house only when he was thoroughly drenched and he had filled every pocket of his rain coat. None of the adults had seen past the rain to the bountiful harvest that lay just outside the door. This story reminds me of groups such as Village Harvest which arose for just such a purpose. It seems like everyone has fruit trees in their yards in California, and yet most of the fruit is never harvested. This group of volunteers goes neighborhood to neighborhood, and with the homeowner’s permission, will harvest their fruit trees, give the resident all the fruit they want, and take the rest to a food pantry.

I think that finding abundance in scarcity is one of the gifts of UUCAS. We run a pretty tight ship when it comes to our operating fund, and yet there is a sense of abundance and generosity in our community. The abundance of good conversation at our recent neighborhood desserts, the abundance of good food and shared talent last night at the our Open Mic night. Even in tight times we receive a profusion of gifts from one another.

Four our pledge drive year, when times are tight, we wanted to try a new kind of challenge. We wanted a challenge goal that everyone could help with, a goal where every gift matters. This year we want to challenge ourselves to increase the total numbers of people who make a pledge by 10%. We know that this is a diverse community, and that our gifts come in all shapes and sizes. So we are asking that everyone make that pledge, that promise, for whatever amount feels good to you this year. We need regular pledgers to keep pledging, and folks who have never pledged before to make their first pledge. Having a pledge drive that is more inclusive, that more people participate in is a goal we can feel proud of. This year we celebrate an abundance of gifts, in all sizes and shapes.

We can think of ourselves like the neighbors who come together to harvest fruit which might otherwise go unappreciated and un-tasted. We could see this as a calling of our community, to notice the abundant fruit right in our back yards, to help one another harvest and share. This year, let us find abundance in scarcity, noticing with gratitude the rain storm that quenches the land when it is thirsty, the tulips that fill the eye with color and joy, and the gift of the lemon tree hiding in our own back yards.

May it be so.

Resources:
* http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101777066
* 32 percent of consumers said they were using credit cards less often than they did a year ago http://www.credit.com/news/personal-finance/2010-01-24/americans-less-inclined-to-use-credit-cards-despite-economic-improvements.html
* "The world produces enough food to feed everyone. World agriculture produces 17 percent more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70 percent population increase. This is enough to provide everyone in the world with at least 2,720 kilocalories (kcal) per person per day (FAO 2002, p.9). The principal problem is that many people in the world do not have sufficient land to grow, or income to purchase, enough food." http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm
* http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/04/09/pm-year-of-giving/
* Other interesting programs include: Fallen Fruit, Harvest Sacremento, and and Neighborhood Fruit (NF)

How are we Saved? (March 28, 2010)

2010-04-12T12:47:00.000-07:00

A couple of years back we were driving down a rural road and saw a church whose changeable letter sign said “Walmart is not the only saving place." I thought that was awesome. I made a guess, based on the stereotypes I’ve got in my head, that this was probably a conservative church. In my imagination, this was probably one of those churches where all the members have a copy of “Left Behind” on their bookshelves somewhere. But that sign resonated truth to me on another level. Because I believe that our church is a saving place, and yet I don’t have any designs on being raptured. So lest you feel “Left Behind” I want to give you the saving news of Universalism this morning.

When we hear the question “are you saved?” We might well ask “saved from what?” The answer, in most cases, is “hell.” First I want to point out that not all the religious traditions answer this question the same way. When I invited the 2 ladies from the Jehovah’s into my house for coffee and indoctrination, they explained that in their tradition there are 3 sorts of folks- the elect who rule with Jesus in Heaven, the righteous, who live on earth during 1000 years of peace, and the wicked, who are destroyed and miss out on that 1000 years of peace on earth. Now I’d been studying Buddhism for a while there in Seminary, and what Buddhists want to be saved from is the eternal cycle of death and rebirth. It occurred to me that what was salvation to them was pretty close to the punishment for the wicked the Witnesses wanted to be saved from.

So some are concerned about being saved from eternal damnation, others are concerned about being saved from death, others want to be saved from the never-ending cycle. The study of this question- the study of salvation is called “soteriology” which means to “preserve”- so another way to look at salvation is to ask “what needs to be, or can be preserved.” The root of the word “salvation” is the same root as a salve- a balm that sooths and heals. So another way to look at salvation is “what saves and heals us?”

Our Unitarian Universalist tradition has some thoughts on this as well. The earliest Universalists believed that there was surely a heaven and a hell, and our souls needed be saved from hell. But in the second generation of American Universalists there was a fellow called Hosea Ballou who didn’t believe in hell. He believed that what we had to be saved from was sin. And let me reassure my contemporary audience that what he meant by “sin” is the same stuff we would be appalled by now-a-days: Murder, theft, cheating, so don’t get distracted by that old fashioned word) He wrote in his landmark work of Universalist Theology Treatise on Atonement ”why [should I] fear sin?” “Answer: Because it will make me miserable if I commit it. There is no priest that I can apply to, who can prevent my suffering, if I am a sinner. If I fear a prison or a gallows, or a punishment in the future world, I may flatter myself some way may be provided by which I may escape them; but if I fear sin itself, I know, if I am a sinner, I must endure that evil.” So he is saying that the down side to sin is not hell or even jail, but that sinning feels bad- it takes you out of right relationship with your world, with your community. He also says that “There is no necessity of promising a reward in a future state for the practice of duty in the present. All that is wanting for his purpose is to understand and to be persuaded that righteousness brings an ample reward, in the present life.” Sin is it’s own punishment, and righteousness is its own reward.

Ballou believed that ultimately we are all going to be reunited with God when we die, that we all return to a metaphysical unity. He believed that when you die, no matter who you are, you return to the primordial one-ness. You are gong home- but home is not a heaven with pearly gates. Some of the more conservative Universalists thought this was ridiculous. Said one such, the Rev. Charles Hudson in an essay hew rote criticizing the “ultra Universalists” like Ballou: “You represent the soul of man as an emanation from the deity, and contend that this future happy life consists in returning to the fountain from whence he came.” And what did Rev. Hudson think was wrong with this? he writes “This opinion was not only embraced by those ancient heretics, the Gnostics, but is the popular opinion of infidels to this day.” Good company as far as I’m concerned.

So Ballou doesn’t feel we need to be saved from hell in the afterlife, but from hell on earth, the hell that we create for one another. According to Ballou, the goal of religion, the goal of a good life is no longer to save souls from hell, but to save life. To save ourselves and all the people in the world, since they are all our brothers and sisters, from the forces that deny life in this world. In the early 20th century, Clarence Skinner spoke of this as a “Universal Brotherhood”
(as a side note, did you all know that the Athens Universalist church was called “The church of the Universal Brotherhood? So named in 1871!) Skinner was a prominent Universalist thinker and activist who wrote in 1915 that “…Universalism inspires…faith not only because it teaches the divine origin of all men, but likewise because of its belief in the common destiny of humanity in all times and in all stations of life.” (Robinson p. 172)

A few years back I was feeling very jaded about my religious tradition. It happens to the best of us. Sure UU raised me from when I was younger than the youngest of the kids in our RE program, gave me an ethical framework, a life’s work. But what had they done for me lately? I talked to my colleague Sheri Prud’homme about the fact that I was having trouble getting excited about my UU tradition, and asked what was it that made her passionate about her faith? Her explanation boiled down to the idea that with Universalism “We’re all in the same boat.” Whatever salvation there may be, it is for everyone. Sheri believed this was important, that it was a precious part of who we are.

At our UU history class last Thursday, I read from the church record in 1878 which reads in part: “Our partialist friends in the surrounding community ,becoming much disturbed and alarmed by the spiritual condition of their ‘awful neighbors’ in the Valley, occasionally send a “Screaming Moses” to warn us of the wrath to come.” I love this story. First, I love that the opposite of a “Universalist” is a “partialist” those who believe that only part of humanity will be saved. And of course the partialists are concerned and alarmed by other points of view, because when part is saved, the rest are damned. When part is holy, the rest are unholy. Part is right and the other part is wrong. How much destruction has been done in this world by those who understood themselves to be good, to those whom they understand as bad? Think about our political discourse right now- one must be completely right and the other completely wrong. One is a force of democracy, and the other a force of fascism. One must be victorious and the other must be destroyed. And yet we are all in one boat: if we tear this country apart it will hurt us all. If we waste and poison the earth, it will hurt all living things.

In the late 20th century we enlarged our conception of the “universal brotherhood” as we began to think in terms of the interconnected web of life of which we are all apart. The social sciences taught us how violence begets violence, and recently proved that there is a relationship between happiness and proximity to other happy people. We understand now that nitrates used in American farming effect coral reefs in the Atlantic Ocean. Our sense of what it means to be a Universalist has expanded. We used to sing “God’s love embraces the whole human race.” [#298] now we sing “Respect the water, land and air which gave all creatures birth; protect the lives of all that share the glory of the earth.” [#175] Who will be saved? Either all are saved or none are saved. The kingdom of heaven is not a gated community.

Still we have to ask; how can we be saved? Our friend Clarence Skinner writes “The idea of Universal Brotherhood is the great social dynamic of the twentieth century. Sometimes it is dynamite. It fires our hopes, builds our dreams, unfolds before us the messianic vision of an imminent Kingdom of heaven on earth.” Skinner believed that we could transform the word through our faith in human dignity. By the end of the 19th century, Universalists no longer about talked how to get to heaven but how to “progressively establish kingdom of God” here on Earth. (This idea can be found in the affirmation this congregation said every Sunday through most of the 20th century.)

Universalists wanted to save souls not from hell, but to save souls from the forces in this world that crush and diminish the spirit of life in each one of us. The Unitarian preacher and writer William Ellery Channing talked about the “capacities of the soul” and felt the purpose of life was to grow those capacities, of mind, creativity, love, justice, reason and many others. Folks who live in oppression, in crushing poverty, in fear of violence never get the chance to develop the powers of the soul; their life, their creativity is lost. This is how the 19th and early 20th century social activists wanted to build the kingdom of god, by creating a just world where not only was life saved from violence and death, but saved for something- saved for a full, rich, and deep life- that every soul might have a chance to grow. How will we be saved? We will save each other.

Building a Kingdom of God, or as a seminary buddy called it, a Kin-dom of god, one where we are all kin, is not something one of us can do on our own. It is not something one group can impose on another. Building a peaceable kin-dom is something that can only happen through our interactions, our relationships with one another. Our relatedness is not optional. We are deeply embedded in this web, in a “network of mutuality.” Says EcoFeminist Theologian Ivone Gebara “relatedness is the primary reality; It is constitutive of all beings. It is more elementary than awareness of differences or than autonomy, individuality or freedom. It is the foundational reality of all that is or can exist. It is the underlying fabric that is continually brought forth within the vital process in which we are immersed.” Or to put it another way “the interconnected web of which we are all part.” We build a peaceable kin-dom in the context of this relatedness, this web. Or if “relatedness” is too cumbersome a word, how about love? Contemporary UU theologian Rev. Rebecca parker says “Love generates life, from the moment of conception to the moment when we remember with gratitude and tenderness those who have died. And in the darkest night, when our hearts are breaking, love embraces us even when we cannot embrace ourselves. Love sages us and redirects us toward generosity.” (p. 14)

Well this leads us to our final question- when will we be saved? In the “left behind” books, we are waiting for a final battle between good and evil that we are inexorably heading towards. And this sense of “being saved later” follows us over into our UU theology sometimes. We will be saved when all people are treated justly and equitably, when science has a cure for the world’s diseases, when our fight is finally won. Parker had the audacity to ask “what if the apocalypse has already happened?” She calls our minds to all the destruction and violence of the 20th century and proposes that “In the aftermath of Apocalypse, the religious enterprise can be imagined as a kind of salvage work, recognizing the resources that sustain and restore life- resources that are ready at hand, not in some distant promise land.” (p. 22)

Parker finds in our UU theology a “realized eschatology” which I preached about last spring. Some of you will remember this idea that the end times are here and now- that when we say “the kingdom of god is nigh” we don’t mean “the end is coming” we mean, it is right here, it’s all around us.

So the time for salvation is now. The place for salvation is here in this neighborhood, this earth, this body. Who is to be saved? All of us. We all need saving, and we all have the capacity to be preserved, protected and salved. And what we are saving is love, this beautiful web of life- not just to allow life to survive, but to allow the profound beauty and vibrancy of all beings to flourish and grow. And how can we be saved? Through relationship. By connecting and re-connecting to one another and with the web of life of which we are all a part. If anyone asks you “are you saved?” feel free to answer “yes, I am. We all are.”

Paganism and U (March 21, 2010)

2010-03-22T07:30:00.000-07:00

I feel pretty confident that if you had asked the members of this church at their centennial celebration whether the children’s lesson one Sunday a hundred years hence would involve casting a circle in celebration of the Spring Equinox they would have looked at you like you had lobsters crawling out of your ears. A lot has changed in just one generation.

In our tradition, Paganism traces its roots back to the feminist movement. A growing feminist awareness illuminated the fact that the imagery of Woman in our denomination was actually rather conservative, that our history and tradition were full of “unexamined patriarchal norms”. Back in 1977, the UUA General Assembly responded by passing the “Women and Religion” Resolution. calling “all individual UUs and UU organizations to examine and put aside sexist assumptions, attitudes, and language and to explore and eliminate religious roots of sexism in myths, traditions and beliefs.”

After the passage of the Women and Religion resolution, the Continental Women and Religion Committee was formed, and sponsored a Feminist Theology Convocation, for UUs from across the country in 1980. It was at this convocation that UUs celebrated their first Water communion, now a standard ingathering service in many UU churches. It also at this event was the earliest known organized UU Pagan worship, along with much discussion about the Goddess traditions and Wicca.

An Adult Religions Education curriculum called “Cakes for the Queen of Heaven” (whose title comes from a reference to the Goddess in Hebrew scriptures) was introduced in 1986, which deconstructed the role of patriarchy in western religion, and sought out female images of God both in the Judeo Christian tradition and in ancient religions from around the world. UUs around the country, including me, were transformed by the realization that God did not have to be male. Finding our own tradition stingy when it came to images of women in sacred text and story, we turned to ancient stories in which the feminine played a more dynamic role.

UUs drawn to the Neo Pagan tradition began organizing. What would later be the “Coven of UU Pagans” or “CUUPS” began organizing at the 1985 GA. Two years later in 1987 Margot Adler (a Beacon Press Author) gave a keynote speech called "A Pagan Spiritual View" at the General Assembly, bringing the dialogue into the mainstream consciousness of our movement. The following year (1988) at the GA in Palm Springs CUUPs received UUA independent affiliate status.

During the same time, there was a movement to manifest more fully our 7th principle, “respect for the interconnected web of life of which we are all a part.” In 1989 the “7th principle project” was formed, and in 1991 they created a “Green Sanctuary Handbook” which laid out a process by which congregations could incorporate environmental sustainability into the life of their community. [The 7th principle project changed it's name in recent years to "UU Ministry for the Earth."]

In 1993, when the silver hymnal “Sing the Living Tradition” was published, the changing face of our UU theology was represented. If you look in the index you will find both hymns and readings under the topics, under "Earth, “God, Goddess and Spirit” and Pagan."

In 1995 A Sixth Source became adopted by the General Assembly in Spokane, Washington after 6 years of work by proponents. It reads: "Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature." I was at the GA that year, and the debate was lively. Proponents wanted to bring earth-centered religion to the same institutional level as the other religious roots of Unitarian Universalism. The general argument against seemed to be fear that the addition of this source would change our identity too radically. I remember several speakers offered the argument that “isn’t this covered by the 7th principle already?” I was not sure how I felt about it at the time. But now I see that it is really quite powerful to say that along with our Judeo Christian tradition, along with humanism and science, along with the major world religions, we affirm as sources of our faith those traditions that are based not on the written word, but on the rhythms and cycles of nature. This includes the wisdom of the Iroquois who lived on this land long before the Europeans arrived, the wisdom of the Japanese Shinto tradition, or the contemporary American Neo-Pagan tradition. Most communities around the world historically have had local religions traditions based in their local ecosystems and these indigenous, populist religions were often marginalized by government sanctioned and centralized traditions. Not only are these traditions more earth-centered than the major world’s religions, but they also tend to be more inclusive of women and female imagery.

That summer the Youth Caucus of the GA stood in those long lines waiting for a turn at the microphone to come out in favor of the amendment to our sources. In fact, the youth were already using several pagan chants in worship, and if you stayed up until 10:00 at night to see the youth worship at GA, you would witness a style called “circle worship” where there is de-centralized leadership, and no sermons. It probably looks a lot more like Pagan ritual than like a UU Sunday morning service. UUA president John Burehns said later that “whatever the Youth Caucus officially supports always seems to pass.” And pass it did, in the only major amendment to our principles and purposes in the last 25 years.

My own acquaintance with neo-paganism followed a similar path as that of our UU tradition. After studying a feminist hermeneutic of the Hebrew scriptures in College, and signing up for Cakes for the Queen of Heaven at a local UU church, I began to free myself from those cartoon images of a male god with a long white beard, a God which had never reached me in a deep way. I too grew up in the UU Youth movement, accustomed to circle worship and ritual. I also tend to be a kinesthetic learner, so I was drawn to a ritual tradition which allows one to interact with objects and motion instead of just words on a page. I also was feeling a call to live in greater harmony with the earth, and a spirituality that would support more sustainable living, and so was attracted to the work of Starhawk who co-founded the reclaiming tradition of Wicca.

Starhawk was a professor at “Holy Names” College, which had open enrollment with my seminary Starr King School. She was living and teaching in the Bay Area while I was there, and has an understanding of the world that resonates well with a UU sensibility. She believes that paganism calls her to action on behalf of the earth, and in fact her career has turned more and more towards teaching permaculture and earth activism. She writes a blog about her activism, which is full of stories about using grounding techniques (like the one we did in our ritual this morning) at a protest of international farm policy or doing ritual on the front lines of a protest the treatment of Palestinians as an occupied people. This is my kind of witch. She co-wrote a beautiful and handy book called “Circle Round” which gives practical advice on doing ritual with children. The first time I sat down to use it to create a ritual with the kids at my church, encountered a description of a winter solstice ritual in which the children could bring all their favorite stuffed animals and action figures to the altar and set them around an image of the sun “in joy and amazement at the birth of the year.” (p. 97). Plastic dinosaurs on a solstice altar? This spoke to me in a deep way. It resonated with my growing sense that everyday things were sacred, and that I wanted worship and spiritual practices to reflected the sacred in the every day, and that was ritual was not something that could only be done by certified professionals using approved gear on Sunday mornings.

As we started our Paganism 101 class here a the church, I was a little nervous. Sure I’d been reading everything StarHawk had written for years, had made altars in my home and office had created rituals in celebration of the 8 Wiccan Sabbaths, but I felt I lacked the authority of an established tradition. Also, I lacked gear. I didn’t have an athame or a pentacle. As I prepared each moth for our class, I urgently set out to find altar cloths in the right colors, the right objects to use in worship. Finally I confessed at one class that I usually use objects from my own life which are special to me when I do ritual. Mary, who has done a lot more reading about these things then me, and has followed traditional proscriptions more closely, said “oh, you’re a kitchen witch.” And I felt much better. It turns out there are about as many kinds of Pagans and Witches as there are Christians. Some folks like High ritual, and follow tradition closely, and some folks use eclectic ritual. Some traditions have intense periods of training and initiation. Other traditions are more open and democratic.

As our little Pagan group here at the church began to meet, we learned about the broader context of Neo-Paganism. We learned about the archeological ambiguity of goddess worship through history, and read articles which suggested that there is very little proof that today’s pagans are in a direct lineage from pre-Christian pagans. We were challenged to ask ourselves- do these traditions and rituals mean less to us if we cannot prove through archeology and scholarship their direct link to ancient times? Can rituals that were created in the last generation or 2 have real power?

When I read articles and rituals of various pagan traditions, sometimes it feels very foreign to me. But when I was reading Starhawk’s most recent book “Earth Spirit” I wonder “what is the difference between what she is saying and Unitarian Universalism?” her belief system was so like mine. Then I realized- it is the practice that is different. The practice and goals of worship are different from our usual Sunday morning worship. Almost all pagan worship shares some elements with our ritual this morning. There is centering and grounding- preparing your mind to be fully present. Then the circle is cast, which is a way of defining the space for the ritual, a way of setting aside the time as special. We usually worship in this room, and so each time we come in the door we know we are here in a time and a place set aside for worship. But pagan rituals are often outside, and can be in a great variety of locations, so by drawing a circle, it helps keep focus and attention on what is happening inside that sacred space.

The 4 directions are called, each direction representing one of the 4 elements common in western ritual. Earth, Air, Fire and Water represent body, emotion, intellect and the ego. The reason the 4 elements are invoked, and present on these 4 altars in a very concrete way, is to represent the different aspects of our lives, of our psyches, of our world. Having all 4 elements present in ritual encourages us to notice which elements are missing or challenging in our lives, and invites us to create a harmonious balance of all the elements. Then the goddess and or gods of the season are invited into worship. Because this is a UU worship, we light a chalice today instead of making those invocations. Some Neo-Pagan traditions are explicitly feminist, like those of Z. Budapest or StarHawk. They focus explicitly on the female aspect of the divine because western religion has been focused on male images of the divine for so long. As Starhawk says “you can’t change the balance on a teeter-totter by standing in the middle.” Those pagans who call both goddess and god are wanting to embody that balance, believing with the Juingians that all people have aspects of male and female in themselves, and we want to encourage balance and harmony between them.

Then, after some good energy has been raised, magic can be done. Now what do I mean by magic? Dion Fortune defines it as "the art of changing consciousness at will." In Spiral Dance Starhawk writes “ A spell in a symbolic act done … in order to cause a desired change. To cast a spell is to project energy through a symbol. But the symbols are too often mistake for the spell. ‘Burn a green candle to attract money,’ we are told. The candle itself, however, does nothing. It is merely a lens, an object of focus, a mnemonic devise, the ‘thing’ that embodies our idea. Props may be useful but it is the mind that works magic.” or as Louise Bunn, the author of our Paganism 101 curriculum says “Magic is the art of manipulating symbols in order to affect a change in consciousness – to achieve results that are substantially psychological in nature.” We did that with our bulbs this morning, using them as a concrete reminder of change we want to see in our lives. Now not every time a pagan casts a circle are they planning to do magic. Some Pagans only do ritual to celebrate Pagans also celebrate the cycles and seasons. They celebrate the cycles of the moon, the cycles of life and the changing of the seasons marked by the 8 Sabbaths.

The pagan calendar focuses on the cycles of the sun. The winter and summer solstice, the fall and spring equinox, and the 4 holidays that celebrate the halfway points between solstice and equinox called the “cross-quarters” Halloween is one such cross-quarter holiday. When I wanted to explore paganism more deeply, the first thing I did was to put all the Sabbaths on my calendar, and make an attempt to have a seasonal altar for each of the 8 holidays, and to observe each even if at was only in a minor way. StarHawk, in her newest book “The Earth Path” recommends a practice I love- just carefully noticing the change of the seasons, and noticing how the seasons vary year to year. So, for example, each of us could take a moment today outside to look, listen, smell, feel all the changes spring equinox has brought this year. This is a wonderful way to celebrate the Sabbath. As a person who comes to paganism through a desire to feel closer to the earth, this has been a powerful practice to me. Each year as the cycle comes round again, I feel like I learn something new about the seasons. We celebrated Spring Equinox with crocuses and bulbs, because this is the reality of this place, this season; there are crocuses splashing color all over our dismal landscape right at this very moment. And now is the time of first planting, so we will plant these Gladiola bulbs which can go into the ground while it is still cold and not be destroyed by a late frost and which we hope will bring color to our church as the seasons change.

After the central celebration of the ritual is finished, pagans ground the extra energy they have raised back into the earth. You can do this by touching the ground to send it back, or some do it by eating and drinking together. Then very carefully you say a respectful goodbye to all those you have invited into your circle, so there is a lovely symmetry to the ritual.

Now it warns on the CUUPS website, that UU pagans are not quite like other pagans. We are, at the heart, Unitarian Universalists. And within this movement, Pagans are a minority tradition. Some UU churches are open to paganism, and some UUs are afraid that Paganism seems superstitious. We are a movement that is so based in reason, so grounded in science and logic, that some have trouble imaging how paganism could harmonize with our tradition. But all our UU congregations have as a source of our living tradition the "Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature." There are many sources of wisdom that we can call upon in our search for truth and meaning, that we call on to help us lead lives of justice equity and compassion, and we are “grateful for the religious pluralism which enriches and ennobles our faith, we are inspired to deepen our understating and expand our vision.” May we be open to all the earth centered traditions that offer some new insight or balance in our own lives, or some new inspiration for living in right relationship with our world.

The Precautionary Principle (March 7, 2010)

2010-03-08T08:15:00.000-08:00

In 1945 the first studies came out about the danger of cigarettes. By 1954 we had epidemiological information linking smoking to cancer, we knew that the more you smoke, the more your chance of getting cancer increases, but we didn’t know how it was that smoking caused cancer. It wasn’t until the 1990s when science figured out that mechanism by which smoking causes cancer, that we had enough science necessary to effect law. 45 years passed there between when we had our first evidence that cigarettes probably were dangerous and when science could prove it for sure. In that time 2 generations of Americans got hooked on cigarettes, and too many died.

The precautionary principle is the radical idea that if you have some early warning signs something might be dangerous, you should act with caution. It sounds like something your grandmother might say, doesn’t it? “Better Safe than sorry” or “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” And, in fact, it comes from an old German word “Vorsorgeprinzip” or “Forecaring” It was first used in environmental law in Germany in the 1970s when the Black Forest was dying, and folks were concerned it might be connected to acid rain caused by power plant emissions. Germany developed environmental law and policy which could help prevent further sickening of the forests, and which encouraged development of new alternatives which would be safer. This principle of forecaring (or as it came to be known in English, “The Precautionary Principle”) was part of the dialogue in the "Earth Summit" of 1992, and is one of the principles of the Rio Declaration. It came to be used in the legal code of many countries, including the European Union.

The Wingspread conference of 1998 was convened by the Science and Environmental Health Network (SEHN) specifically to formalize the precautionary principle, and imagine how it could be applied. Their statement of the principle is as follows:

"When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.

"In this context the proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof.

"The process of applying the Precautionary Principle must be open, informed and democratic and must include potentially affected parties. It must also involve an examination of the full range of alternatives, including no action."

That all sounds kind of like common sense, doesn’t it? So what is the context in which a principle like “better safe than sorry” is cutting edge environmental thinking? Because current environmental laws are set up with a “risk assessment” premise, which became standard practice in the United States in the mid-1980s and was institutionalized in the global trade agreements of the 1990s. When the San Francisco City and county was researching the Precautionary Principle, they wrote a white paper which summed up Risk assessment in this way:

“Risk assessments present numbers that purport to show how much harm might occur. In a second step, policy makers attempt to decide how much harm is acceptable… however, risk assessment…does not prompt decision makers to ask whether alternatives exist that would substantially reduce risk.”

“For example, a risk assessment may attempt to define how many children will suffer developmental disorders or cancer after playing with a plastic toy that leaches chemicals of poorly understood toxicity. With this risk assessment in hand, policy makers may then attempt to define how many diseased children (one in 10,000? 100,000?) would be acceptable. This process provides no opportunity to examine an alternative option, in which toys are only made from materials known to be safe for children.”

So the precautionary principle creates a different paradigm for handling materials or processes that might be risky. It can be boiled down to 3 elements: uncertainty, harm, and precautionary action Whenever there is a threat of harm, but there is still scientific uncertainty, we can act with precaution. The principle also has something to say about the nature of that action- and this is an important change as well. It’s not the public who should bear the burden of proof, it’s the “proponent of the activity,” say the company which produces the plastic toy or the chemicals in question, to prove that the products really are safe.

Opponents of the Precautionary principle say that it will bring progress to a standstill. But the principle itself doesn’t tell us that we can’t act, only that caution is advised. The Envrinomental Research Foundation recommends a few steps for applying precaution that is, infact, action oriented. IT starts with setting goals, then look at all the reasonable ways of achieving those goals. They say “ Assume that all projects or activities will be harmful, and therefore seek the least-harmful alternative”...and further that we should “Expect reasonable assurances of safety for products before they can be marketed -- just as the Food and Drug Administration expects reasonable assurances of safety before new pharmaceutical products can be marketed.” And during this process, we need to make sure that all of us who are effected will be part of the process. So if you are building a power plant or a sewage treatment plant in my neighborhood, we would make sure you are using the safest processes, and that my neighbors and I get to be involved in an open democratic process.

As UUs, we like a good open, informed, democratic process, it’s right there in our 5th principle “use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large.” We like to protect our world, that’s in our principles too “Respect for the interdependent web of all existence, of which we are a part.” The Precautionary Principle also sounds like part of a “Free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” It is a principle that would seem to resonate with our own values. I think the part that might be hard for UUs is the idea that we can act (or choose not to act) before the science is conclusive. After all, the 5th sources of our living tradition is “the guidance of reason and the results of science” and here I am saying that “I’ve got a bad feeling about this” should have legal precedence over conclusive scientific data?

Well, one thing about science is that new things are learned and proven and dis-proven every day. Theologically speaking, science is part of our Unitarian Universalist belief that revelation is ongoing. We believe new truth is constantly coming into our awareness, and that it will go on being revealed forever. We don’t want to act as if we know everything now, because we believe we will know more later.

A 2001 report written by the European Environment Agency recalled some of the worst examples of misplaced certainty about the safety of certain risks, a certainty which caused us to overlook early warning signs. They include such examples as radiation, ozone depletion, asbestos, and Mad Cow disease, concluding that: “Misplaced ‘certainty’ about the absence of harm played a key role in delaying preventive actions.”

So why can’t we be more certain about the effects of such tings? Because “serious, evident effects such as endocrine disruption, climate change, cancer, and the disappearance of species can seldom be linked decisively to a single cause. Scientific standards of certainty may be impossible to attain when causes and outcomes are multiple; latent periods are long; timing of exposure is crucial; unexposed, “control” populations do not exist; or confounding factors are unidentified.” So the precautionary principle doesn’t ask us to reject science, just acknowledges that the scientific process is time consuming and that as in the case of the dangers caused by cigarettes, complete proof may not be ready in time to prevent harm. So let’s take grandma’s advice and be “better safe than sorry.”

Right now our community and our neighbor’s communities are embarking on a great adventure- that of horizontal drilling in the Marcellus Shale. How could we use the precautionary principle in these last few moments before we leap? In Colorado, the City of Grand Junction and the nearby town of Palisade “were concerned about risks to surface water from construction of roads, well pads and pipelines, as well as storm water runoff and spills of drilling fluids, fracking chemicals and brine. They were also concerned about the potential for groundwater contamination.” After 2 years of talks, the towns were able to negotiation a watershed protection plan with Genesis Gas and Oil. “Not only does their watershed plan include baseline studies of sources water, it also requires closed-loop drilling, emergency response plans and a commitment to using “green” hydraulic fracturing procedures, processes and materials. This means that any chemicals used in the watershed area will be ‘biodegradable, nontoxic, neutral pH, residual free, non-corrosive, non-polluting and non-hazardous in the forms and concentrations being used.’”

I found this really heartening, to learn that less toxic alternatives are available – since some of the chemicals used in the hydro-fracking fluids, and in the flowback water from drilling are known carcinogens or endocrine disruptors, and more than 40,000 gallons of fracking fluids can be used in a single well. Companies like Frac Tech are using orange citrus to replace some solvents, and palm oil in place of a slicking agent that is prohibited in Europe but still allowed in the US. Beginning in 2003, many companies have replaced Diesel as a common ingredient in fracking fluid with mineral oil in response to pressure from the EPA. Apparently less toxic alternatives not only exist, but are required for the fracturing fluids used in offshore drilling. “Both European law and the regulations of the U.S. Minerals and Management Services dictate that chemicals used in the North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico must be safe enough that they won't kill fish and other organisms if they are dumped overboard. 'You can always do it,' said BJ Services' Dunlap, whose company has been a leader in innovating sustainable materials. But, Dunlap said, the chemistry costs more, and is justifiable to his shareholders only because the regulations for offshore drilling left no choice." (Pro Publica)

Let’s get back to the precautionary principle- if we had really taken a good look at the hydro-fracking process - if we had looked before we lept, and if finding the least harmful solution had been a goal, I wonder if some of the horror stories we hear from towns like Dimmick PA could have been prevented. If we had used the precautionary principle and sat down with all involved parties in an open democratic fashion and found the examined the full range of alternatives, I have to imagine that Dimmick residents would not be in litigation today, trying to prove that the chemicals now in there drinking water are there as a result of hydro fracking.
What if folks in our communities became as pro-active as those towns in Colorado? What if we sat down with neighbors and gas companies and discussed the alternatives? Currently Hydro-fracking is exempt from both clean air and clean water acts, so there is nothing in the law to require gas companies to use the least harmful methods. But what if now, at the start of the drilling in our region, we negotiated the least harmful way to do this drilling here in our eco-system, in our watershed, in our human community? Said Michael Freeman, an attorney for Earth Justice: “there is no escaping some damage from drilling. But if the best available precautions were routinely followed, environmental harm could be minimized and the industry may face less resistance from the public as it taps the vast new gas deposits that have been discovered in recent years”

Hydro-fracking is a complex process that will have many different impacts on the eco-systems and communities it inhabits. I have focused here only on fracking fluid, but there is also the flow back fluid, and the emissions that will effect our air. And while we have some information about each of these chemicals taken on their own, the Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS) on the drilling says there is not good information about long term non-lethal and interlocking effects. Current environmental law says that if science can’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt that hydro-fracking can be document to have caused harm, they can use these processes until it is proven conclusively. 50 years it took the cigarette industry. We can’t afford to wait that long to slow down a process that might be harmful, and that certainly involves chemicals that have been proven harmful in other situations. And of course there are effects beyond the toxins- How will the fracking impact the geology and seismic activity? How do new industries impact local economies, effect things like housing and municipal infrastructure? Our Shale Network group had 4 pages full of impacts we thought bore further exploration before we finally had to bring our list to a close when we ran out of paper and time.

Natural Gas drilling is a reality in Bradford County, but we are just at the beginning of what will current estimates project to be a 25-50 year process. Now is the time for the Precautionary Principle, for a little forecaring. Now is the time for an ounce of prevention. If we think there could be a risk of harm to the eco-system, to our drinking water, to our land, let’s slow down, bring together all the involved parties, and seek out the alternatives that will do the least harm. Like mom always said, “better safe than sorry.”

Resources:
WHITE PAPER: The Precautionary Principle and the City and County of San Francisco March 2003.

“Science & Environmental Health: Carolyn Raffensperger”

THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE IN THE REAL WORLD By Peter Montague

Tompkins weekly, v. 4 No. 15 “Proposed Well Draws Concern” by Sue Smith-Heavenrich

"Underused Drilling Practices Could Avoid Pollution" by Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica - December 14, 2009 12:00 am EST

Rachel’s Environment & Health News #770 “Environmental Justice and Precaution” by Peter Montague

James Luther Adams (February 21, 2010)

2010-02-23T09:21:00.000-08:00

When you live in hard times, in times of war or strife, people begin to question their beliefs. During World War 1 (1914 to 1918) and World War 2 (1939 and 1945 ) the old optimistic liberalism was hard to maintain; how could we believe that all people were at heart truly good in light of all the horrible things happening in the world? Suddenly James Freeman Clarke’s articulation of “The Progress of mankind onward and upward forever” which had been so popular among Unitarians at the end of the 19th century seemed out of touch with the realities of the 20th century.

It was during these times that James Luther Adams helped find a new way for Unitarianism. Adams grew up as so many Unitarians did, in a fundamentalist household. His father was a traveling Baptist preacher, and often took his son “young Luther” along with him when he preached and James played violin for the hymns. Like so many other Unitarians, Adams followed a new road when he went to college (at the University of Minnesota). He became an atheist and a humanist, and eventually found himself at the Unitarian church. There he heard the preaching of John Dietrich, who preached a humanism that was both scientific and religious. A Unitarian professor, Frank Rarig, saw that deep below Adam’s outrage at religion persisted a religious impulse. In an autobiographical essay, Adams recalled that Rarig once told his student that Adam’s problem was that he had never come across a "self-critical religion." That being the case, it is not surprising that Adams found a home in Unitarianism. It was also Rarig who told Adams, much to the young man’s surprise, that he was bound for the ministry. Adam’s friends were shocked when their “raving humanist” friend headed off for Harvard Divinity School in 1924 to be come a Unitarian minister.

Adams’ fist settlement was at the Unitarian church in Salem Massachusetts (1927-34). While he was there, he continued to study, earning a master’s degree in comparative literature from Harvard, and then teaching in the English department at Boston University (1929-32). During this time there was a labor strike at the local textile mill. Workers, managers and the mill’s owners attended his church. The press was not covering the strike, so Adams used his pulpit to call for a public airing of grievances, which lead to press coverage and eventually a settlement between labor and management. Adams put to action his belief that if the liberal church did not stand up for the oppressed, if they were too bogged down in individualism to work for social justice, they were passively acting to maintain the status quo.

In 1935, Adams was invited to join the faculty at the UU seminary the Meadville/Lombard theological school. He accepted, but asked for a year to study in Europe before he began. Arriving in Europe in 1935, Adams witnessed the Nazi government in action. He was part of the Underground church movement, and was on one occasion questioned by the Gestapo, at risk of imprisonment for his actions. While in German Adams used his home movie camera to film great leaders like Karl Barth and Albert Schweitzer who worked with the church-related resistance groups, and also the pro-Nazi leaders of the Christian Church. By the time he came back to the US, he was more convinced than ever that any church which could stand by and passively let such oppression happen, was irrelevant and impotent.

Adams was at Meadville/Lombard from 1936-1943 where he trained a generation of students for the ministry He then taught at University of Chicago from 1943-1956. While there he was a founding member and leader of the Independent Voters of Illinois whose mission is to increase voter registration and voter education in Illinois, and to be activists toward creating a more open and honest government. The organization is still working to create savvy voters and honest government today.

In 1957 Adams went to teach at Harvard Divinity School, and after retiring from Harvard in 1968 due to their mandatory retirement policy, continued teaching at Andover Newton (an ecumenical seminary where many UU ministers are trained). Adams was a brilliant teacher, attracting students from diverse faith traditions. He loved interdisciplinary conversations, even holding seminars on religion and law, and religion and business.

Adams also was a force for change in our denomination, serving on many committees at the UUA, including the first ever Commission on Appraisal 1934-36. The commission was called into being during the bleak period in Unitarian history which followed the great depression, and the wars in Europe. It was a time when many questioned the relevancy of Unitarianism. The commission posed the question: “Have we sufficient faith in our own future to warrant us in undertaking the arduous task of making ourselves fit to survive?” The commission’s work resulted in an important reorganization of the AUA. Adams’ call for change often rankled the UU establishment, but by the time of his retirement, he was widely respected.

JLA (as he was often affectionately called) helped our UU faith through a difficult transition. He helped articulate a contemporary liberal theology that is still at the core of who have become as a movement. He was a prolific writer, and articulated many important ideas, but I want to focus today one that is crucial to who we are today. Adams was grounded in a “pragmatic theory of meaning.” As British Psychologist Alexander Bain has said, “a belief is that upon which a person is prepared to act” (p. 117). Now remember Adams was a theology professor, so that means that he likes to trace every idea back to his roots. So if you read Adams pretty dense writings, he will introduce you to all kinds of important thinkers you may or may not have met before. In drawing out this pragmatic theory, he brings to our attention William James, who wrote that “a pragmatic theory of meaning would enable us to come into better working touch with reality” (p. 118. I really love this.) Theology can be so confusing. How can you really know the nature of God, what happens after you die, or how to be a good person? Do you just accept the statements of faith handed down by the church fathers? Do you look for an internal logic to a theological system? Do you apply scientific methodology? To William James, the pragmatic theory of meaning was a “method of settling metaphysical disputes which might otherwise be endless” So how do we decide whether a certain theological theory is better than another one? We see if there is any difference in the actions inspired by that theory. Said Charles Sanders Pierce “Different beliefs are distinguished by the different habits of action they involve.” So despite all the arguing over the centuries about, for example, whether Jesus was created by God or was around since the dawn of time just like God the Father, the pragmatists ask, “does either theory make any difference in how you act day to day?” James wrote that “an evening at a symphony concert has been wasted on a young man if on returning home he is not kinder to his grandmother”

I want to explore this point with a story from my own life. I went to seminary as an atheist-leaning agnostic. I was constantly looking for scientific proof for the existence of God, and finding none, thought it would be foolish to believe that God existed. Over the course of my years of seminary, I began to assemble a picture of “what kind of god I could believe in, if I believed in god”. But I had no proof about the ontological nature of God. So I was stuck. While studying systematic theology I followed the reasoned arguments of Paul Tillich as far as I could, but there was a point where reason left off. I burst into tears one day in my theology seminar. Professor Kimball responded “At some point it looks like the path ends and you have to leap. I can assure you that there is something beyond that point, but only you can make that leap.” Still I struggled and wrestled with these ideas that continued beyond the edge of reason and science. And when I finally leapt I took this rope with me as a safety line: “Will I be a better, more ethical, happier person if I believe than I am right now?” And clutching that line, I leapt. To this day I believe that what humans call God is a human construct, that a divine essence which pervades all life will never be replicated in a laboratory, can never be argued definitively with reason, but I notice that I am a happier, more generous person since I opened myself to certain ideas than I was before. It turns out the “pragmatic theory of meaning” helped me in just the way James described, “to help settle metaphysical disputes which might otherwise be endless.”

Adams editor, Max Stackhouse, wrote in a preface to one of his essays “More than one religious scholar, spotting Adams in the audience, has departed from the prepared text to say that ‘of course’ what he is presenting needs to be spelled out in concrete terms, but “for the moment” and “for the sake of precision” attention will focus on theory. But for Adams, precision is not gained by narrow focus on one level of meaning, but by integrating levels of meaning in a way that relates to practice.” To Adams, the point where theology meets our real lives, meets this time and this place is not a part of the conversation that can be put off for later. It is always at the center.

For Adams, the pragmatic theory is already there in traditional Christian thought. He finds it in the New Testament saying “By their fruits shall you know them.” [Matthew 7:16] Here in the sermon on the mount, Jesus is answering the question how we can know the difference between real prophets and false prophets. Jesus advises “Beware of false prophets who come in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves” When I think back to Adam’s experience in Nazi Germany, I can see how he came to embrace this kind of theory- because he saw with his own eyes those leaders of the church who sided with the Nazis, those who passively let atrocities happen without speaking out, and those courageous folks who risked their lives and freedom to save lives and fight the spread of fascism. “You will know them by their fruits.”

This relationship between belief and action is crucial to our UU identity today. We have never had a Unitarian or Univeralist creed in our 400 year history, but have often gotten into theological arguments about where the limits of our faith are. Today the beliefs of Unitarian Universalists are more diverse than ever before. And so this litmus test is crucial for our contemporary identity- you know a good UU by his or her fruits.

This winter our congregation has heard a lot about social justice on these cold Sunday mornings. Lest you had been wondering “what does this have to do with being UU?” Adam’s theology helps us see how ethical living became so central to our movement. And Adams believed it wasn’t just the personal “fruits” by which we shall be known. He also believed strongly that the same standard should be applied to institutions. He said “No one can properly put faith in merely individual virtue, even though that is a prerequisite for societal virtues. The faith of the liberal must express itself in societal forms” (p. 18) Adams was referring to the social institutions of education, economy and politics. Because without these societal forms, you cannot create a free and just community.

Says Adams “The faith of a church or of a nation is an adequate faith only when it inspires and enables people to give of their time and energy to shape the various institutions – social, economic and political—of the common life. ... Any other faith is thoroughly undependable; it is also, in the end impotent.” (p. 18)

Again, I have to imagine that witnessing so many churches passively give their power to shape history over to the Nazi regime must have had a deep impact on the formation of Adams’ theology. A faith that encourages piety, even one that encourages an ethical life, yet who would stand by and do nothing as atrocities unfolded around them is, in Adam’s words. “… a faith that enables history to crush humanity.” (p. 18) Adams draws on his Judeo Christian roots by seeing in the Hebrew Prophets the early exemplars of this -- those ethical prophets like Micah and Hosea who challenged the standing order of things in ancient Israel, who challenged the waste and privilege of the kings and those in power. He sees today’s liberals as contemporary prophets, responsible for calling to account the institutions of our time.

In 1961, when the Unitarians and Universalists merged, we accepted 7 principles which we covenant to affirm and promote. The 4th of these is “A free and responsible search for Truth and Meaning.” And how can we, a people without a creed, a people who don’t have a unifying holy book to guide our way, how can we know what is truth? How can we find meaning? Our own Unitarian Theologian helped shine a light in a dark time for our world, a time when our faith was languishing, by offering an answer. We will know truth, we will find meaning, because it “helps us come into better working touch with reality (James p. 118). Adams encourages us to ask of any idea we encounter - Does it lead to ethical action? Does it lead us to act in history to make a more just world? Does it inspire in each of us to make a commitment to action on the part of justice? James Luther Adams offers to us the same advice we read in the gospel of Matthew “by their fruits they will be k nown.”

Resources

http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/unitarians/adams.html “JAMES LUTHER ADAMS: THEOLOGIAN OF POWER 1901-1994” by George Kimmich Beach, Faculty of Divinity Memorial Minute, Harvard University

http://www.iviipo.org/index.htm

http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/jameslutheradams.html

James Luther Adams On Being Human Religiously (Max L. Stackhouse ed.) UUA 1996.