That Direct Experience of Transcending Mystery and Wonder (March 25, 2012)

Because I am a Universalist, I believe that everyone has the capacity for a spiritual life, that everyone is on a spiritual journey. In fact, because I am a Universalist, I believe there is no part of our lives that happens outside of our spiritual journey -- it is the nature of life. So I preach about washing the dishes, because this is part of our spiritual journey. I preach about social justice, because this is one of the main spiritual practices of Unitarian Universalism. But sometimes there comes a longing to know spirit in its distilled form. The name our tradition gives to this is: “Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces that create and uphold life”

This Unitarian Universalist faith tradition holds, as the very first source of our living tradition, our own direct experience. We believe a person does not need a religious authority to mediate their relationship with the divine. We believe, with the humanist Curtis Reese “that every age must achieve its own faith.” The Muslim tradition holds that Mohamad was the last of the prophets and in Judaism it is said to be Malachai. Both traditions hold that with these prophets there is a seal on revelation. But traditionally Unitarian Universalists don’t believe this. We believe that revelation is ongoing, we, like the younger siblings in a large family, don’t want to settle for a “hand-me-down” revelation. We want to be pioneers and explorers ourselves. We, with the Psalmist, want to “Taste and see” (Psalm 34:8)

But part of the reason we talk about washing the dishes and working for justice as a way of seeking the spiritual life instead of climbing to the proverbial mountain top is that not everyone feels called to climb that mountain. Some folks pursue wisdom and insight from the stories and writings of the great prophets and teachers, others by doing good work in the world. Right at this moment, that’s all I want. A quiet moment of reflection now and again, a thought provoking story, and good work to do. But when I was in seminary I wanted to taste for myself. I felt a deep seated desire to know more. Last week I talked about how those early humanists did not deny the existence of God, but “were in a distinctly anti-metaphysical mood” Well, this is the exact opposite impulse. For me the hunger that drove me to seek direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder was a hunger to know God.

I had spent already a couple of years in graduate school trying to know God through the intellectual search, reading and studying theology and all the other things folks need to know for the ministry. I had spent some time trying (and mostly seemed like failing) to learn to meditate. But at some point I wanted more than to write and think about the divine, I wanted to know for myself. When I was studying in Berkeley, there was then as there are now a group of teachers who lead “Satsang” which means “being in the presence of truth.” One of those teachers talked about this hunger, this craving to experience spiritual truth, and she said that this hunger is the prerequisite for this kind of seeking. Without this hunger, one cannot experience the truth.

I went to see one of my professors- Prof. Yielbanzie Charles Johnson, one of the only professors who talked explicitly about the life of the spirit. He had said often enough in class “If you want to have spirit in your life, you need to invite spirit into your life.” Even so, I felt a little crazy asking him my questions- both about how to invite spirit into my life, and how to grounds that search to keep from drifting away into the ether. Most of the esoteric spiritual practices come from outside our UU tradition, but Yielbanzie reminded me that being deeply present with the natural world is one path that has been part of our UU tradition for generations. Immersing oneself in nature, listening and emptying and being filled in a forest or in a desert like the girl in this morning’s story. Yielbanzie advised “ask earnestly, pay attention.”

All of the major religions traditions have these seekers of direct experience, they are called mystics. (Our UU mystics are the transcendentalists.) If you read some of the poetry or writings of mystics from very different traditions you will notice tremendous similarities in what they describe. Many traditions suggest that one needs a teacher of some kind, a guide. Many recommend a community of learners. Because if you go on this journey you are specifically seeking something beyond your understanding, you are seeking something powerful. It is good to have people to talk with and keep you company on the way, to keep you on the right path.

Most traditions suggest that the first step is living an ethical life. For example in the 8 limbed path of yoga, the first limb is “Yama” which means ethical living. If you are going on a journey up the spiritual mountain, you don’t want to be carrying a lot of baggage. If you are stealing from your boss and cheating on your wife, this is the very first thing that is going to jump out at you on your journey – the demons of not being right with yourself and your community.

It is also recommended that one have some kind of spiritual practice, or discipline. When I was at the University of Creation Spirituality on my sabbatical, we would have a seminar each morning, then for 3 hours each afternoon we would have “art as meditation.” During one of our intensives I studied chanting and meditation with Russill Paul who called this practice the “technology of ecstasy.” Because this is not a new search, folks have been on this path for as long as there have been people. There are helpful guideposts and teachings passed down to us for generations. One could spend one’s whole life following these different practices and noticing different energetic sensations and trance states not usually found in the ordinary experience. But as the Buddha and so many spiritual teachers have pointed out, there are a number of traps and detours on the way to pure experience. For example, I practice Hatha yoga. This is only one part of the 8-limbed path. It would be easy to get trapped in trying to do poses perfectly, or in accomplishing that cool pose on the cover of Yoga Journal, but the actual goal of yoga is “Samadhi” or union with the divine. Any path you take has the risk of sidetracking you from your real journey. I heard a student of meditation explain how after practicing for years he finally reached a state of pure bliss. He rushed to his teacher to share the good news and the teacher gives them a good whack on the head, because bliss is not the goal- pure awareness is the goal.

For myself, I spent a number of years devoted to this search. I didn’t have children to care for, and my work was preparing for and then beginning to serve the UU ministry, so such a search fit very well with the other factors in my life. I am so blessed to have had that time, a time I think of as my climb up that proverbial mountain. Yielbanzie had suggested that I “look for that thing that may not appear to be obvious… your help may come from where you least expect it.” I took his advice seriously. Instead of looking for confirmation of what I already thought I knew, I changed my focus to those things which surprised me, and realized I was thrilled to know there was still something in the nature of our experience that could surprise me. One fellow traveler said “whenever things get really weird or confusing or difficult, you know that you are really in it- you are right there in the mystery.”

I began a habit of listening to everything as if it was that help coming from some place I wouldn’t expect it. And I kept up my practices- I was at this time keeping a journal of my journey, I was keeping a dream journal and participating in a regular dream group, and I was studying Kundalini yoga, which included some very interesting and exciting things and also sometimes just the mind-numbing process of focusing your attention on a single point until you wanted to climb out of your skin. I never did get to the top of the mountain, but just high enough up to get above the tree line where the air is clear, and where you have a clear view of everything around you. I came away with a feeling that we were all part of something so much bigger than ourselves, that we were held in love. I finally had answers to some of the questions I had been asking my whole life, and also just became comfortable just being in the presence of mystery.

Theology, which had seemed so complicated in my systematc theology text books, started to seem simpler and simpler, and eventually it occurred to me that there is no you and I, there is no other to search for because all are one. How far I had to travel to come home to this very Universalist truth. But, as Gangaji says “to hear it, even to understand it, to memorize it, to hope it’s true is not enough. It has to be discovered Directly.”

When Yielbanzie preached at my ordination, he preached about getting lost, because I had taken so fully to heart this idea that if I wanted to find truth I had to follow the spirit even if it lead to strange places. And in particular because when the seminary class went to do our final ritual at a nature preserve, and the whole class followed the sign that said “I took the path less traveled by” I assumed that meant I should take the other path, and went tromping deep into the brush by myself. On that very real journey, as on my spiritual journey I eventually realized that if I was ever going to rejoin the community of persons, I was at some point just going to have to turn around and head back-- that eventually I had to go back down the mountain. Some folks are called to be holy men or women living on the side of the mountain, making camp in the desert, but it became clear to me that I had to ground my spiritual life in the daily fabric of living. The 15th century Sufi poet Kabir writes “Be strong then, and enter into your own body; there you have a solid place for your feet. Think about it carefully! Don’t go off somewhere else!”

Ultimately our knowing, our search for the divine must be grounded in our body- in our very particular time and space. So my husband and I bought a house, we had a son, and I got a full time job, and I committed myself to building a just world. For me such mundane acts as working in the garden, helping my son with homework, cooking – these are right at the heart of spiritual living. Even though I am no longer blinded with the brightness of the spirit within them, I know from my time on an explicitly spiritual journey, from the insights I gained during that part of my life, I know that these things are infused with spirit. I would go so far as to say they are brimming with God. Whereas before I started an intentionally spiritual journey these things may have seemed boring or beside the point, today they seem infused with meaning and purpose. Even on those days where I feel stressed out or uninspired, that knowing lingers. The simplicity of the vision that grew for me on my journey supports me on my path even in the ordinary time when I can’t even see the mountain from under the grove of trees I call my life.

While I was at Satsang one evening, back in Berkeley so long ago, a middle aged man mentioned that when he was young he had had experiences of being overwhelmed with the presence of God, with the spirit in his life. He had lived in that feeling for a while, but then it had receded and he, all these years later, missed it very much. The teacher said that this was not uncommon to have an intensity of experience as we first come to know God, but that later in a mature part of the journey, we don’t need to be hit over the head, we can listen for the divine in more quiet everyday places.

This brings me to the two main points I want to leave you with this morning. First, because I am a universalist and I believe that everyone has access to that transcending mystery and wonder, I believe that one does not have to follow complicated or esoteric teachings to reach truth. The simple breathing meditation is both appropriate for beginners and a practice that leads to enlightenment. One of the central teachings of Gangaji is that we can, in any moment, cut through our normal way of thinking and get to the truth of things. It is fine to follow the esoteric teachings, the scenic route through the realms of spirit, but there is always a direct path, a simple path, because there are no elect, no chosen who have the special skills to achieve union with the divine. WE are all on the path, but not all of us choose to climb this particular part of the mountain. I believe that those who hunger can find the spirit, as Lalla (a 14th century North Indian Mystic) says:

No ritual,
No religion,
Is needed.

Just cry out one
Unobstructed cry.”

Second, the heart is the best door to this journey. When I was studying Kundalini yoga, we spent time each class meditating on our heart center --literally on this area in our chest, which is also the location of the heart chakra. We would practice centering our attention there and cultivating a certain kind of feeling, or energy. I’m making both a metaphysical and a humanist point here; the heart is the node of the energetic system where the spiritual and the physical meet. But more importantly, it is the seat of compassion. No matter what kind of journey you are no, no matter where you are your journey, always start with your heart, always ground yourself in compassion. Compassion for yourself, and compassion for all living beings. This is why in a beginning meditation class, one will practice observing the breath, and loving-kindness meditation. Truly this is all one needs for the journey. Paying attention, and compassion. Says the great Christian Mystic Teresa of Avila, “if you are not certain about your relationship with God, stop worrying about it, focus on loving your neighbor, and the God-question will take care of itself.”

Everyone is on a spiritual journey all the time. We cannot escape it. The monk on his meditation cushion, the mystic in her cell, the householder at the sink filled with soapy water. Because God, the spirit, the meaning of life, are fully present in the faces of our neighbors, in the quiet of the forest. They are as close as our own breath moving in and out. But if a hunger comes for more, for knowing more closely, for a direct experience of that transcendent mystery and wonder, treasure that hunger, nurture that hunger, and see what new place it might lead.

Three Gifts of Humanism (March 18, 2012)

Earlier this winter we were gathered for a class about early Unitarianism and Universalism, reading excerpts from the sermons of our earliest fore-parents who were explicitly Christian and believed in the authority of scripture and the saving power of Jesus, someone asked “so how did we get from there to where we are today?” This is the story of one huge turning point in our movement, the bend around which we turn to find a clear view of the Unitarian Universalism of today. This is the story of the dawn of modern humanism.

It begins with a minister born right here in Pennsylvania, in Chambersberg to be exact. A John Dietrich who grew up and started his career as a minister of the Reformed church, but was tried by his church for heresy and defrocked. And so he did what so many good heretics have done, he converted to Unitarianism and moved to the west coast where he began his career as a Unitarian Minister in Spokane Washington in 1911.

It begins with a Baptist preacher called Curtis Reese who, while he was in seminary found that the new theories of biblical criticism undermined his fundamentalist upbringing, his belief that the bible was the literal unerring truth. He too converted to Unitarianism in 1913 and worked for a more “democratic” religion as opposed to what he thought of as the “autocratic” Christianity.
It begins with Charles Potter, another Baptist preacher, whose colleagues questioned the theology in his preaching. He preached a sermon for the AUA national secretary Lewis Wilson about Jesus, and after hearing the sermon Wislon “Declared him a Unitarian.” Potter also converted to Unitarianism in 1914 and was called to us first Unitarian church in Edmonton Canada, where he was introduced to the ideas of Dietrich, and realized that he was not alone in his crazy ideas. Potter was called on as a witness for the defense in the famous “Scopes” trials.

One of the things you will notice about all these folks, aside from the fact that they were “come-outers” that is to say, folks that left another religion to become Unitarians, is that they all served Unitarianism in the west. Whereas on the East Coast many Unitarians had grown up in the faith which embraced the older UU theologies and practices, Western Unitarianism (which included the mid-west) was a hotbed of new thought populated mostly by other “come-outers.”

This is the first gift of Humanism. “Religion must formulate its hopes and plans in the light of the scientific spirit and method.” In this time of great scientific advance, people wanted a faith that harmonized with the teachings of science, and demanded a higher burden of proof for their belifs. In the words of Reese, folks “who are afraid to face the facts about their own beliefs lest they lose their faith altogether…such people are building their faith upon the sand” (Reese in Robinson p. 150) At a time when the shape of modern life was crumbling some old beliefs, humanism emerged as a strong place to stand, a faith based on the hard physical laws of reality, rather than the metaphysical beliefs which required a leap of faith. we see in the First tenant FIRST: Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created. And SECOND: Humanism believes that man is a part of nature and that he has emerged as a result of a continuous process. These humanists refused to profess anything that they couldn’t’ stand firmly on. As AUA President Frederick May Eliot (president from 1937-1958) remarked of the humanist “He may not believe very much as measured by orthodox standards, but what he does believe he believes with his whole mind” (Frederick May Eliot in Robinson p. 148).

The existence of God is not denied by these earliest humanists- this is a common misunderstanding by folks who use the words “humanist” and “atheist” interchangeably. Instead these humanist tenants show us a faith where religion had a “natural character” as

As Curtis Reese wrote in his “The Content of Present Day Religious Liberalism” “This is not the denial of the existence of significant and objective worths, but only the removal of the sat of authority from an indefinite something somewhere, to a definite self known to be native ot human existence.” (in Parke p. 135)

The debate that arose between the (mostly) west coast humanists and the (mostly) east coast opposition. The Humanist theist debate raged throughout the 1920s and 1930s and nearly split the denomination apart. One of the leading proponents of Unitarian Christian Theism was William L. Sullivan who was raised Roman Catholic and was ordained as a catholic priest in 1899 Roman Catholic Priest). It was a 1907 encyclical of Pope Puis X condemning modernism that caused Sullivan to leave the church, feeling like he couldn’t stay and feel honest. Despite his love for his church, he entered the Unitarian Ministry in 1912. He preached here on the east coast, in New York City and in Germantown Pennsylvania, and was an influential defenders of theism in 1920s. When Reese spoke of theism as “a monarchic view of religion that placed God in the role of master and humans in the role of slaves” Sullivan responded with a character of Reese’s God as “The Big Democrat whom we are to clap upon the back with an equalitarian ‘Howdy do, Camarado!”

When these early pioneers of humanism were going to seminary and starting out in their careers, Raymond Bragg was just a small boy, growing up in a Congregationalist family- Congregationalism is one of our closest religions neighbors- in fact we have often teamed up with them on things like women’s suffrage and abolition. While he was at college he was exposed to Unitarianism, and after graduating applied to Meadville theological school for seminary- one of the 2 Unitarian Universalist seminaries still training our ministers today.

It was Bragg whose name is headed up the effort to create the first Humanist Manifesto. He commissioned Roy Wood Sellars (another Unitarian who was a professor and prolific writer of philosophy) to make the original draft. Bragg and committee of other Humanists, revised and expanded the document. 34 humanists co-signed it, all men (it is assumed that no women were invited to sign) and of those 15 were Unitarian. The document had only 1 universalist signer- Clinton Lee Scott (who wrote our opening words and our closing words for worship today) . The Manifesto was published in the New Humanist, of which Bragg was then an editor.

The manifesto laid out clearly the substance of what I offer you today as the second gift of Humanism- the idea that human life, far from being sinful and something to be denied in favor of a glorious afterlife, human life is of deep value. The Seventh tenet of the manifesto reads “Religion consists of those actions, purposes, and experiences which are humanly significant. Nothing human is alien to the religious. It includes labor, art, science, philosophy, love, friendship, recreation--all that is in its degree expressive of intelligently satisfying human living. The distinction between the sacred and the secular can no longer be maintained.” This idea that the sacred and the secular were not distinct was not a new idea. We remember this idea from the transcendentalists who believed that God could be found in nature. In fact many of the transcendentalist ideas opened the way for humanism in the following generations. The eight tenant holds that “Religious Humanism considers the complete realization of human personality to be the end of man's life and seeks its development and fulfillment in the here and now.” As Curtis Reese wrote in an address he gave at Harvard divinity in 1920 “He is not willing to accept the promise of a distant estate of doubtful character and location in lieu of concrete worths and measurable values here and now. He believes that whatever the future may hold for him it must be the outcome of his own spiritual achievements.” (in Parke p. 134) No longer is our goal to earn an eternal reward, but to fulfill our human personality- and it is not just the fulfillment of a few intellectuals or historic figures the humanists are pointing to – but each and every human on the planet. "Believing that religion must work increasingly for joy in living, religious humanists aim to foster the creative in man and to encourage achievements that add to the satisfactions of life."

This is part of what makes humanism an essentially optimistic way of looking at the world. They put their faith in a belief that at the core human nature is good and worthy of being “of supreme worth” (Reese in Robinson p. 146), a belief in progress both of the individual spirit and of society. But this was also the source of the primary critique of humanism as well. Folks who looked at the atrocities humans have committed in our world, or folks who had experienced great tragedy in their own lives felt that this faith in humankind was not enough to, as it were, get them through the dark night.

Well, you can see why if the development of every human personality is the sole purpose of the human enterprise, you can see why a commitment to social justice would be so important. How could we stand by and see our brothers and sisters degraded, starving, or sitting behind a machine in a factory making $9 for 56 hour weeks as was the custom in industry at the time. (more on that when I speak on worker’s rights next month) How could one develop the human personality in such circumstances? Says the manifesto: “Humanism will… endeavor to establish the conditions of a satisfactory life for all, not merely for the few” If we believe in progress of the self and of society we must role up our sleeves.

So the third gift of humanism is its commitment to social action and the betterment of all. In this first manifesto we see a shining vision of what life should be for us all: “ The humanists are firmly convinced that existing acquisitive and profit-motivated society has shown itself to be inadequate [does this sound familiar? Still resonates with our political landscape today, doesn’t it] and that a radical change in methods, controls, and motives must be instituted. A socialized and cooperative economic order must be established to the end that the equitable distribution of the means of life be possible. The goal of humanism is a free and universal society in which people voluntarily and intelligently cooperate for the common good. Humanists demand a shared life in a shared world.” Wow. I want to live in that world. I want to work for that world. Moreover, this work we do for the betterment of society helps us to develop ourselves, the great end of human life. This work for social justice is the spiritual practice of the humanist. The NINTH tenant of the manifesto reads: “In the place of the old attitudes involved in worship and prayer the humanist finds his religious emotions expressed in a heightened sense of personal life and in a cooperative effort to promote social well-being.”

The name of this document is “A Humanist Manifesto” not “The Humanist Manifesto” and indeed two more manifestos followed, one in 1973 and one in 2003. The 1973 manifesto explicitly acknowledges that: “Events since then make that earlier statement seem far too optimistic. Nazism has shown the depths of brutality of which humanity is capable. Other totalitarian regimes have suppressed human rights without ending poverty. Science has sometimes brought evil as well as good. Recent decades have shown that inhuman wars can be made in the name of peace.” But if you take a look even at the 2003 manifesto you see that the core tenants are still the same – a religion based in science and in the physical, natural world, an elevation of the role of humanity to provide their own meaning and fulfill their own lives, and a knowing that we are all in this together, and that it is up to us to improve society for everyone.

It was just about 100 years ago that the first Humanist sermons were given in our Unitarian pulpits. Humanism changed our Unitarian and Universalist traditions forever, describing a bend in the road of modern thought. Today in this room we are humanist and Christian, Jewish and Pagan, but these humanist gifts are a legacy for all of us.

References:
David B. Parke, ed. The Epic of Unitarianism: Original Writings from the History of Liberal Religion. Skinner House Books, 1985.

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

At the Edges of the Garden (March 4, 2012)

(This sermon is part of an ongoing series on the Principles of Permaculture. The 8 principles we are using come from Starhawk's "Principles of True Abundance")

Growing up in Pennsylvania, there were many things that amazed me when we moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, but nothing more than the coast where the Pacific Ocean meets the land. Now as you might imagine, growing up outside Philadelphia I had been to the jersey shore on occasion, but the Pacific coast is different. Instead of these long stretches of beach where hundreds of families put up their beach umbrellas, the Pacific is edged with rocky cliffs, and the distance from water to cliff is often quite short. Those cliffs provide a more fruitful home for vegetation and wildlife than a wide expanse of sand. The most amazing thing of all was tide pools. I didn’t think I would see a real tide pool in my lifetime; I thought that was something only National Geographic photographers got to see. But within an hour or two from my house there were several different state parks where at low tide you could see these tiny eco-systems inhabited by hermit crabs, snails, lipids, muscles, even occasionally a starfish and most amazing of all, anemone- those colorful ocean flowers. Each of these little tide pools is its own world – sometimes only a couple of feet in diameter. I read in a children’s book in the state park gift shop that if you were to pick up, say, a lipid from one tide pool and put it down in another it might not survive. These amazing little critters can only live on the edge where the land and sea meet. You could see how tide pools only a few inches deep was a great habitat for a hermit crab, but only in tide pools a foot or deeper would you find a starfish. Each anemone needed it’s own piece of edge to call home, preferably in the shade, and would only open when covered by the tide.

It turns out that the edge between water and land creates the most productive eco-systems on earth [Permaculture in a nutshell p. 48) for example, plants growing immediately adjacent to rivers and streams (they call this riparian vegetation] has greater diversity and grows more densely than just a few yards further away fro the waterway. I learned a new word- “ecotone” which is an overlapping edge between two bioregions, where there is greater diversity than one bioregion could produce on its own – the mixture not only of each of the two bioregions but also those special species that can only survive in such transitional space. For example, David Holmgren, one of the originators of Permaculture, reports that in his native Australia you normally see only 2 different species of eucalyptus trees in any given area, but in the Towamba Valley where 2 bioregions overlap, he counted 13 different species [p. 225 Permaculture Principles and Pathways beyond Sustainability]

But our industrial culture doesn’t value edges. We try to reduce the number of edges, for example, by creating huge multi-acre farms, or by building houses in big residential developments. Consider those suburban areas where there are literally no mixed used areas, where you must drive past a mile or more of residential housing to get to stores or libraries, or to anything besides just residential housing. This is what we are used to- it feels efficient, and tidy and safe to us. It’s easy to see the benefits – if you are a farmer with a huge field of corn you can set a giant agricultural machine to go back and forth in neat horizontal passes. If you are a developer, you can buy a big tract of land, maybe an old farm, and just fill the whole thing in with houses without having to worry about all the complexities of city planning. Permaculture, which is a theory of agricultural and cultural design focused on sustainability, shows us actually the farms I pass on my way to work with a patch of farm next to a stand of trees may have environmental benefits. The edges of farms have great habitat for birds who provide pest control, the edges are allow for cross-pollination and hybridization that might provide needed diversity in times of drought or other farm disasters.

But many of us actually moved to the suburbs because we wanted to be on that edge between the farm or the wilderness and the city. Many of us would love to live around the corner from a state park or pedestrian business center, yet we build to minimize edge. In permaculture we are advised to actually try to create more edges. Now I learned the hard way in my 5th grade math class that a square or rectangle is not the way to make the most edges. A big block of housing or a large rectangular field has the least edge possible. IN my 5th grade math class I was stuck for weeks on the assignment to “Draw they shape with the greatest perimeter (that is to say, the most edges) with an area of 25.” I sat with my graph paper day after day drawing different shapes until finally the teacher took pity on me. It turns out that the shape with the greatest perimeter is a shape like a set of stairs- those open construction where you can walk underneath. Making nooks and crannies creates the most perimeter, the most edge. Think about the clean lines of the beaches in Atlantic City, and the many nooks and crannies of the tide pools on the pacific coast. The more edge, the more robust diversity of life. So the most diverse, productive farm or garden is going to be a patchwork of plants and trees and ponds and hedges.

Let’s move outside the garden into the community of persons. We can all probably call to mind a housing development or area that is single use only. They tend to be pretty quiet, and there is a singleness of purpose. I went walking near a friend’s home recently and we saw maybe one person who wasn’t in a car. Unless you are or out for a jog or a kid biking over to your friend’s house, there is no reason to go outside your house in such a neighborhood except to get into your car. But in what we call “mixed use” zoning, we might find retail stores and businesses mixed in with homes and you will find a greater bustle of activity. I moved from a neighborhood in California that was designed as a bedroom community. It was dense tracts of houses bordered by huge multi-lane roads to help people on their commutes to workplaces sometimes an hour away. Today I live in a neighborhood where people can live, and work and play and shop. It is a diverse and productive neighborhood which maximizes its edges much like the community of plants and animals we find alongside a pond or creek.

At the other edge of things, a lot of folks live out her in Bradford county because they want to be on the edge of agriculture and wilderness. I know a number of folks in this congregation have land where they raise their own food or animals, and other folks who live where they live because they can walk out their back door and right into a hike on uncultivated lands. Life is drawn to the edges.

I remember learning in high school about several different philosophical movements of western history. They always seemed start with the merchants- as the merchants opened up new trade roots or port cities, cultures from new places would meet and interact, ideas were exchanged and cross-pollination happened. It always seemed to happen the same way -- that these great intellectual and cultural growth spurts happened at the edges and overlaps of cultural eco-systems. And when I got to the San Francisco I realized that this was exactly what was happening there. At the edge of the pacific people from all over the world, but especially from the U.S., Latin America and Asia met and created amazing leaps in spirituality and theology and technology. I think it is no coincidence that West coast spirituality is considered so “far out” -- because it is born in a unique place where eastern and western theology meet and live together. I think it is no coincidence that there have been such massive technological advances in what we might call a cultural “ecotone” or that California has an the 9th largest economy in the world – it may be in part because of this tremendous cross-fertilization. Just as Holmgren found 13 species of Eucalyptus in costal eco-tone areas, there was tremendous cultural and racial and religious diversity in the valley where I used to live. My son went to a preschool in Cupertino, the town where Apple computers was born, and he was one of only 2 children in his preschool class who only spoke English. I think maybe 5 or 6 different countries of origin were represented just in his 3-year-old class.

In our political discourse right now, when we talk about “borders” the political rhetoric is all about defending them- defending them from the very diversity that makes borders valuable. We as a nation are saying that having 13 species of eucalyptus tree in the border where eco-systems meet is scary, that we feel more comfortable with the 2 species of tree we are used to.

Our US borders used to be mostly open. Until the 1790s any free white person became a citizen after 2 years. The Page Act of 1875 (Sect. 141, 18 Stat. 477, 1873-March 1875) was the first law to really single out immigrants to exclude, and particularly focused on women from China. We were eager to have immigrants from China to bring desperately needed income and labor into California, but most analysts say that we as a country excluded Chinese women, and in fact women from all over Asia, from immigrating because of, well racism – we were afraid that Chinese families would put down roots and bring the very cultural diversity that has over the centuries been so enriching to our nation. Then in 1882 the Chinese exclusion act singled out immigrants from china who had provided so much of the labor for mining during the goldrush, and for building our railroads – this act said that Chinese Immigrants could never become citizens, and if they left the country for any reason they could never return. It was not repealed until 1943!

Then in the 1920s that we began instituting the quota system based on country. According to the U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian, "In all its parts, the most basic purpose of the 1924 Immigration Act was to preserve the ideal of American homogeneity.” Though the diversity in our country has grown, the obstacles faced by recent immigrants to our country today are exponentially more difficult than those faced by immigrants when my grandfather and my husbands father and grandfather were entering this country.

Diversity is not an unequivocally better- there are strong, stable forests that have a simple mix of species, and there are certainly strong stable communities of humans that are homogeneous. And I think I understand why, when it comes to communities of humans, we are scared of margins and edges, why we are scared of the diversity it brings. Because diversity does change a local culture. When biology or culture mixes and mingles, it creates hybridization, which creates “new local cultures of place” (Holmgren p. 219)

Think about how when someone new joins our church, it changes us. When we add a new kind of plant to our garden it changes the garden. Holmgren writes “The change and transformation of the culture mainstream is an implicit part of multiculturalism” (p. 220) And all those immigrants who have come to America over the past 400 years have made our country into what it is today. What would the America we know and love be like without our Irish heritage? Our German culture? Italian? Chinese? African? Mexican? We could not be the country we are without any of these folks. Yet back in the early days of our country Ben Franklin remarked “Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion.” We are stunned now by Franklin’s racism against Germans, yet it is so strangely familiar that we might not be surprised to hear it on the television today. The principles of permaculture ask us to look at the margins, to look at diversity in a different way.

When we look to the garden we see that diversity creates stability. I’ve spoken often enough from the pulpit about the vulnerability of farming with a mono-culture of crops, and how poly-culture protects against disease and pests, but let’s think about, for example, a diversity of ages. Have you ever noticed how teenagers sleep late into the morning, whereas toddlers wake at the crack of dawn? There is some research now that it is beneficial to a community for different generations to have different sleep patterns, so that someone is always awake to mind the store. Or I think of an example from a campus ministry near a church I served. When I arrived at the church I inquired at the local college about the campus ministry there. They said they had had a good group but then the leaders had all graduated. The very next year a new group of leaders matriculated, and we worked to connect them to the local congregation where folks could give them rides to church, and where our ministry team could reach out to the new leaders and support them through transitions. The campus ministry became more stable as it became more diverse with regards to age.

Another benefit of diversity, whether we are talking about diversity of biology or of ideas, is that diversity provides new solutions to problems. I’ve seen independent bands who couldn’t afford mainstream gear create sounds using anything they could use their hands on- music boxes, drums, tanks (that’s where the steel drums come from - Caribbean musicians transforming old biscuit tins or paint pans or steel oil drums into an amazing new form of instrument ) If you have infinite financial resources there is always a solution for a price, but musicians at the margins must bring creativity to their sound. Or consider the GLBT pioneers whose growth at the edges of our culture just a generation ago have changed the way we see the world. They have made this a much safer time and a place for GLBTQ folks, and just as important, their pioneering presence creates space for all of us to more freely express gender and sexuality, it creates a more diverse numbers of models and ways for us to express ourselves. Says Holmgren, “Diversity provides alternative pathways for essential ecosystem functions in the face of changing conditions.” (P. 205)

It is the edges that provide habitat for diversity, not the great rolling fields of corn and soy, but the old English gardens divided by hedgerows, gardens with a diversity of fruits and vegetables edged by woods and residential areas, a patchwork of diversity that maximizes the edge, much as I learned in my 5th grade math class. Great diversity can be supported as we increase the edge, giving a niche, a tide pool, a “local culture of place” While the dominant culture steers us toward what Holmgren calls the “Global culture of no-place “ (p. 220) in which all local languages and cultures are inevitably lost in the “melting pot,” it is up to us in the local communities where we are rooted to value and enjoy the benefits of a diverse ecology of flora and fauna, of cultures and ages. Communities with diversity have more resources and flexibility as things change.

This principle- of valuing diversity and honoring the edges, is not one which matches cleanly with one of our UU principles and purposes. And yet it seems to me an important part of who we are and how our tradition has always grown. As a people of open minds, UUs have often been at the growing edge with our ideas and have often helped bring them into the mainstream. But we also see in our history for our institutions to codify those now mainstream ideas, and to forget that the edge itself is valuable, that It produces ever more novelty and diversity and growth. Our religious tradition is not just about those ideas and principles we learned at the margins, but is also a process of remembering to turn to the edges for solutions and creativity, instead of mowing them down to create uniformity.

True abundance can be found by honoring the edges, both of our gardens, of our waterways, and of our communities. True abundance is found when we value diversity; when we think of ourselves as one living organism we don’t need to fear the competition or change diversity brings, but be grateful for the both the stability and flexibility it adds to our community, to our ecology. Consider the abundance of the thousands of unique people in our little valley, the hundreds of thousands of unique species all over the world. If that’s not abundance, I don’t know what is. Whether we are in our gardens, in beloved community, or considering national immigration policy, let us remember always to honor the edges, to see what wisdom may be found there.

In the Beginning (Evolution Weekend; February 19, 2012)

It matters what story you tell. In the beginning of the Hebrew scriptures there are, what most contemporary scholars think of as 2 creation stories. In the first one you will recall that God said “let there be light” and there was light. And God said that it was good. My Hebrew scripture teacher in seminary points out that this is an amazing way for the Jewish and Christian sacred texts to begin- with God calling the world into being with words. It gives power to the idea that those holy scriptures are important, that words are important, that words have the power to create and to shape. The second creation story in the bible is the one where God shapes Adam out of the dirt, forms Eve from Adam’s rib, and tells them to “fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” (Genesis 1:28 NRSV).

Now I come from a religious tradition that does not approach the scriptures as the literal word of God; I believe they are filled with poetry and symbol and metaphor. The stories found in the Judeo-Christian scriptures are ancient stories told person to person and occasionally edited and written down by different traditions of religious scholars. These stories have power because they are part of our shared meta-narrative. It doesn’t bother me that in the bible the whole of creation takes only seven days, when science currently estimates it took roughly 13.7 billion years. Here’s what does bother me -- that as a culture we have used this creation story as an excuse to fill the earth and subdue it. Creation stories have power. They tell us where we came from, and what role we have in this universe.

As a culture we have tended to separate the “science and how things work” part of our lives from the “religion and what does it all mean” part of our lives. So even someone who goes into a lab on Monday morning and works all week with hard data might still be living by a creation story that tells us that we are the pinnacle of creation, that it was all created just for us to fill and subdue. What if we didn’t leave science in the lab on Sunday, but brought it to church with us? Brought it right into the heart of the stories we tell one another to make meaning of our shared existence?

Brian Swimme, a mathematical cosmologist, and Tomas Berry a Catholic priest and cultural historian took on the daunting task of getting the story that science tells out of our laboratories and graduate level astrophysics classrooms, and into our hearts. They believe that we need a story that is compatible with the latest scientific truths that we can know by heart and tell our children when they ask at bedtime “where did we come from?” Says Swimme, “Every child should be told; you come out of the energy that gave birth to the universe. Its story is your story; its beginnings are your beginnings.” Swimme and Berry first attempted the daunting task of turning science into poetry and story in their ground breaking book the Universe Story and their work has spread. There is now a whole movement of storytellers who are telling stories about who we are and where we came from based on the science of evolution, the evolution of not only species but of the whole universe. Story tellers like Connie Barlow and Michael Dowd have dedicated their lives to telling and retelling the “great story” --the story of the universe. I propose that as UUs, as a people who believe in the power of science to shine a light on life, each of us needs to learn and tell this story. When I say “Adam and eve” a whole flood of stories and images come to our minds, everyone from the great painters of the Italian renaissance to the Simpsons. But when I say “the big bang” or “the Devonian extinction” my mind flashes back to some cramming I did late night before a science exam.

So today I want to tell you a few stories about who we are and where we came from that are rooted in science. This particular way of telling our story comes from Swimme and Berry in their “The Universe Story” and also from Starhawk in her book “The Earth Path.”

The first thing we were, was one. The beginning of our story, and indeed of all that is was the flaring forth from a singularity. As we heard in our children’s story this morning, all the energy that ever was and ever will be came into existence in an area smaller than the point of a pin, although that’s not really the right way of talking about it, since space and time were contained within that tiny singularity. The first thing that ever happened in this universe was emergence, birth, the unfolding and expanding of space. The foundational forces of our universe were a balance of expansion with the gravitational force which maintains a cohesion that allowed a balanced and sustainable unfolding.

The growing universe was in the beginning and to this day continues to be shaped by density waves which are amplifications of the subtle fundamental vibrations or aftershocks from the flaring forth. Within that first fraction of a second after that flaring forth photons were no longer able to leap into and out of being. The cooling universe entered a new level of stability as Neutrons and protons were able to bond and form lasting relationships. Clouds of all these newly formed particles and elements were shaped by the density waves and the first primal stars appear -- formed from cohesion of the first elements helium and hydrogen. When those primal stars died as supernovas releasing all those elements and energy, their death allowed second and third generation stars to come into being for the next 4 billion years. Even as the universe expanded and expanded, the gravitational force drew elements together to form galaxies and stars. Clouds of elements came together into billions of spiral galaxies, one of which what is now the Milky Way Galaxy. It was the death of the supernova Tiamat about 4.6 billion years ago that released nutrients that formed our own sun and planets, as she had, in turn, been born from the death of other stars.

4.45 billion years ago the planets of our solar system were formed from collections of granules and gasses drawn together into 10 bands around our sun. And these bands in turn were drawn together to form planets. Our own bodies are made up, just as our planet is from Carbon, Oxygen and other elements that were ejected around that dying star Tiamat as it collapsed.

As earth formed and cooled, Aries, our first living ancestor emerged in the lightning storms and turbulent chemical interactions of earth’s oceans about 4 billion years ago. Many of this first generation of living cells, prokaryotes, became extinct quite quickly, but others are the ancestors of, for example, the bacteria alive today, because they carried within them DNA, the capacity to remember and pass on the blueprint of life. A mutation in one could be passed on for generations into the future. As they mutated they helped ensure the survival of life on earth. Because as the earth became less turbulent, the heavy mineral compounds which littered our seas and atmosphere provided a feast for our first ancestors feasted were not produced as quickly as the abundant new life could consume them. But life adapted to meet this shortage. Those early single celled organisms mutated to be able to eat the waste of their cousins, and others to eat the compounds from the decaying bodies of other life forms when they died.

But even so, they were eating and reproducing at a rate faster than the earth could produce new compounds. This would have lead to a great extinction, if it were not for Promethio, an ancestor who evolved the ability to photosynthesize 3.9 million years ago, (100 million years after life appeared on earth) to capture photons from the sun and turn them into energy. Some call it the most amazing technological advance in the history of life itself and this advance was made, say Swimme and Berry “Without a brain, without eyes, without hands, without blueprints, without foresight, without reflective consciousness.” (P. 90) and they were, moreover, though their DNA, able to remember and share this technological breakthrough.
All through this time, as the earth was giving birth to the first life, those life forms were changing the earth by what they took in and what they gave off. These earliest ancestors lived in a world where the oceans were brown and the atmosphere “a brownish orange” made mostly of nitrogen and carbon dioxide and methane (2.5 billion years ago).

For example, all those volcanoes threw off great amounts of Carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and therefore beings who could transform that Carbon dioxide into their living bodies would flourish. And whereas an atmosphere rich with carbon dioxide helps the earth to maintain heat, with all those little single celled organisms turning Carbon Dioxide into life, the whole temperature of the earth declined, creating the first major ice age about 2.3 billion years ago.

The earliest cells consumed hydrogen, which had been plentiful and air, and which had sustained life for so long. Soon, however, hydrogen was over-consumed by a growing single-celled population. Some mutated into blue-green bacteria and were able to take hydrogen from the seas, sending flinging out a toxic gas into the land and sea and air, fundamentally altering the balance of our biosphere. That toxic gas was called Oxygen, which was like poison to these early beings, breaking down fragile membranes. As the oxygen content became higher and higher, at first those cells who lived in water could survive, but soon oxygen penetrated every part of our biosphere and there was a great catastrophic extinction.

But then life mutated. A Cyano-bacterium we can call Prospero drew prosperity out of catastrophe 2 billion years ago , inventing respiration; the ability to use oxygen for fuel, using it for a kind of controlled combustion, giving it many times more energy than its ancestors. Because there was so much oxygen it prospered. This helped stabilize the balance of oxygen on the planet, but even so the atmosphere approached 21% oxygen, the level at which spontaneous combustion happens.. Imagine -- the early earth had only half a percent of oxygen, and now had 21%! Like the balance between the forces of outward propulusion and gravity whose miraculous balance allows our universe to exist, a special balance of the gasses on our planet allows life as we know it to exist.

But this cycle of mass extinction and innovation continued. The Cambrian extinctions 570 million years ago saw the loss of 80-90 percent of species, yet in the aftermath of that extinction the Eukaryotic cell was born about 2 billion years ago, a cell with a nucleus, like the cells in our own bodies. Our earliest multi-celled ancestors - jelly fish, flat worms - filled the planet 2 billion years ago after the most vast glacial extinction earth has ever seen. Then life invented the shell, giving birth to life forms like trilobites, clams, and snails 550 million years ago, and vertebrates 510 million years ago. The cycle continued as 440 million years ago the Ordovician catastrophe was followed by the evolution of insects and fish with lungs. 370 million years ago the Devonian catastrophe was followed by a novel mutation where Lycopods developed wood cells, becoming the first plants who could defy gravity and stand upright on land and vertebrates came ashore in response to.

The Permian-Triasic episode [245 million years ago] was the greatest of all extinctions. It erased 75-95% of all species living on earth, especially those in the tropics. Coral reefs were wiped out in their place there was only a void for millions of years. This time the earth was very slow to repopulate, in part because that vast treasure trove of memory, the DNA of all those extinct species was gone forever. The great continent Pangea had drifted over the south pole creating a colder drier climate. In a life affirming response, the egg came into being, a less vulnerable way of reproducing evolved first in reptiles, who could migrate further inland now that they didn’t have to reproduce in water. Land animals evolved a way to retain their body heat in a cold climate) – the warm blooded reptiles that we believe were ancestors of the mammals like us to follow. As the Dinosaurs appeared these were the first era of animals to care for their young- to stay with the young after they hatched, and mammals who could nourish young outside the womb.

Placental mammals emerged in the wake of another devastation 114 million years ago [Aptian extinction] Earth grew cold. The mammals who could carry their young inside them- who could experience pregnancy and birth as mammals to day experience it, theses animals had an edge because their young started life outside the womb more developmentally advanced than the young of reptiles and dinosaurs. Many of the animals who now keep us company on this earth came into being: horses, rabbits, bats, whales, primates, lions, flowering plants and songbirds.

But then Antarctica split of from Australia, opening up a passage for currents of cold air, and the first ice began to form in the sea around Antarctica, an the temperature of the whole planet became colder.

The primates and other mammals had began to flourish in a vacuum left by a devastating extinction 67 million years ago which eliminated the dinosaurs and 70% of life on earth. This mass extinction may be the most famous. It is called the Cretaceous-Tertiary event [or K/T boundary] because it created such a clear boundaries between the era of the dinosaurs, and the eras without them the followed. This mass extinction eliminated the diversity of dinosaurs, marine reptiles, mollusks, fauna. There is some debate about what caused the extinction, but whether we believe it was caused by a great asteroid hitting the earth, a time of great volcanic activity, or the movement of tectonic plates, whether the extinction was dramatic and swift or happened over millions of years, we know that the climate changed drastically and could no longer support the old life forms, like the dinosaurs. Twice more the wealth of life and diversity of species swelled and died back, caused by environmental catastrophe caused by major shifts in the earth’s climate.

4 million years ago the first hominids were distinguishing themselves from other primates with a larger brain size and upright posture, though our ancestors still spent a lot of time in the trees. 3.3 million years ago the current ice ages began. 2.6 million years ago the Homo Habilis was the first hominid to make an abundance of stone tools. We can tell that Homo Habilis were hunters because the kind of tools they made -- developed for hunting and cutting apart their food. These were the first of our close relatives. 1 million years ago earth saw the peak of Mammals on our earth. Then during the following ice age many of the large many of the large animals such as the mammoths, the saber tooth tigers, and the mastodons as the glaciers advanced further and further south, shrinking the habitat and food supply for both animal and plant life. About 30,000 years ago the Neanderthals hit an evolutionary dead end. When the glaciers retreated, it was the smaller animals that took their place- the white tailed deer, wood mice and migrating birds; the abrupt climate changed began the most recent period of mass extinction. From that time, about 11,500 years ago, to this day we are part of the most recent mass extinction- including huge reduction in the other “mega fauna” that is- animals larger than ourselves such as elephants, giraffes, and rhinoceros. In fact hundreds and thousands of species have become extinct in our time; many scientists believe this to be from our own human actions- hunting and destroying habitat for perhaps hundreds of thousands of species, particularly in dramatically diverse communities like the rainforest.

As we once again alter the delicate balance of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere we risk another dramatic unbalancing of life on our planet- the 6th great extinction. As we look back over billions of years of our story, it may remind us with trepidation of the great extinction when our atmosphere was unbalanced so many billion years ago, or it may remind us of the triumph of Prospero, who turned toxic waste into the stuff of life. This story of extinction and adaptation is a sometimes tragic story, but it is also a story of hope. Hope for life on our planet and for life itself. Life finds a way.

It seems it may be up to we Homo Sapiens to make a change, a breakthrough on the level of respiring oxygen or turning light into energy to restore a new balance to our biosphere. Say Swimme and Berry “While the human cannot make a blade of grass, there is liable not to be a blade of grass unless it is accepted, protected and fostered by the human.” (p. 247)

One thing that has been true of Unitarians since we called ourselves by that name is a value of science and reason. And Science has given us a new story of who we are and where we come from.

We live in the eon of geologic time in which all 5 kingdoms of life have blossomed on earth. We live in a time of war, of competition for resources, of technological achievement. We live in a time of massive species extinction and changes to our biosphere.

A story that helps us understand our place in the order of things must be a big story, a story that reminds us both that we are new- coming as we do after 13 billion years after the first flaring forth, and 4 billion years after the first life appeared on this earth. Our human history is just the latest chapter in a long, long story. The Universe Story also shows us that we are deeply intertwined with all that is. We were there in the very first moments and there in the dramatic end story of the supernova Tiamat, in the triumph of Arius, of Prospero. The story of their tragedies and successes is our story as well. Let us call on all those billions of years of wisdom and memory lest we miss whatever part of the story that will help us shape a bright future for our selves and our biosphere. The collected wisdom in our culture, in our bodies, in our DNA, in our ecosystem is a remarkable inheritance.

Who better than a faith that values science and reason to appreciate such wisdom? Who better than a faith which affirms we are all on the same path, to heed that wisdom in shaping a just and vibrant future. Who better than this very community to be students and teachers of this, our whole story? Who better than the Universalists and the Unitarians to remember that in the beginning all was one?

Feed What you Want to Grow (February 5, 2012)

(This sermon is part of an ongoing series on the Principles of Permaculture. The 8 principles we are using come from Starhawk's "Principles of True Abundance")

Have you ever had aphids in your garden? Aphids are tiny little light green bugs eat the sap out of a rosebush or a tomato plant. I know when I see them in my garden I tend to panic. They reproduce like crazy- I heard that aphids can actually give birth to female offspring that are already pregnant! Conventional wisdom is to spray everything with insecticide -- to kill them all because if you let even a couple survive they will reproduce quickly and your garden will be covered with aphids again in no time. Moreover, each generation of aphids that survive are increasingly resistant to those insecticides.

Last year about this time I went to a workshop led by writer and Activist Starhawk about the “Principles of True Abundance” she called this the “nuke what annoys you” plan, and said that true abundance comes instead from “feeding what you want to grow.” Pests like aphids have natural enemies. In the case of aphids, one of their enemies is ladybugs. So in theory it is best to leave your aphid problem to the local ladybug population. Here’s the tricky part: predators of all kinds breed more slowly than their prey. They are slower to respond to changes to the ecosystem. This is a good thing, because it keeps predators from completely wiping out their own food sources. But when you spray insecticide all over your garden, you are killing not only most of the aphids, but most of the ladybugs. And because aphids reproduce so much more quickly than ladybugs, they will recover faster.

In this case, in our garden full of aphids, what we want to grow is ladybugs. So if we are thinking long-term, we can plant Marigolds, or dill, or fennel which are favorite foods of ladybugs. Ladybugs overwinter under rocks and in leaf litter, so we feed what we want to grow by letting a layer of fall leaves lay on the garden all winter, instead of “tidying up” as many of us have been taught to do.

Know who else likes to eat aphids? The Chickadee and the titmouse. Birds are some of the best insect eaters there are. If we want to make our garden bird friendly, we can add not only a birdfeeder to help get them through the lean times, but we would also make sure there are dense shrubs and trees to nest in as well as branches to perch on. To make our garden a home for birds we would also need a source of water. Now if you’ve ever been in an airplane, you remember flying over what looks like a quilt – but those quilt blocks are actually huge fields of neat rows of crops. If you drive by such fields they stretch on as far as the eye can see. You don’t see this as much on the roads I take to work, the fields on my commute are not so vast, and usually bordered by wild uncultivated patches of trees and shrubs. But in those big huge fields of mono-crops, there is no place for our bird friends to live and hide and nest. Most conventional fields are sprayed with expensive insecticide which kills all the natural insect predators in the process of killing the aphids and other bugs which would do harm to our crops. The thing is -- this method is not working. Apparently the USDA has been keeping track of the numbers and you can see from their figures that 50 years ago, before our newfangled high-tech farming methods, crop loss to pests and disease was a bout 7 percent per year. Now that we have all these patented insecticides and high tech farming methods, or crop loss has gone up to 14%. This is compelling proof to me that the “nuke what annoys you” approach to pests is not as effective as we might believe.

This idea of “feeding what you want to grow instead of nuking what annoys you” can be extrapolated into our personal lives as well. I believe the usual phrase is “you get more flies with honey than with vinegar.” When I was reading every parenting book I could get my hands on this strategy was called “positive discipline.” This school of thought suggests that instead of focusing on punishing mistakes, we focus on catching our kids doing it right, and making sure they know what “doing it right” looks like. So if you see your child at the sink wet from head to toe and surrounded by a puddle of water, we all know what our first gut instinct would be, but we could also reply “oh, you remembered to wash your hands! Looks like you are doing a very thorough job. Now let me show you how to clean up all that water on the floor.”

I have found over the years that often my son when does something “wrong” he actually was never taught how or doesn’t have the resources to do it “right”. Sometimes a few minutes together at the sink is all a parent and child would need to prevent a hand washing catastrophe.

When it comes to relationships, often the most effective thing we can give them to help them grow is our attention. For example, when we adopted our rescue puppy Trey, he had just about every behavior problem there is. He was so timid and afraid that he spent most of each day curled up in one spot on the sofa. But part of the reason I had chosen to adopt a high needs dog was that my job as your minister allows me to work from home during the day, so I knew I would be around a lot. After that first month Trey could be in the same room with humans, and if I let him go to his special safe spot and cower, he would let me pick him up. Because he was afraid of the stairs, every time I went upstairs to my study to work I would scoop him up from his safe spot and bring him with me so he could spend the time in his bed by my desk, or peaking out the window.

We were supposed to go out of town that first Memorial Day weekend, but because Trey was still very tenuous in his behavioral gains, we decided to stay home and just spend time together as a family. All 3 humans and 2 dogs puttered around the house. I played a little mandolin, mopped the kitchen, and taught my son a new card game. I started to remember that when we spend a day together just hanging out at home, good things happen. Our new dog even forgot himself and took a biscuit out of my hand instead of waiting for me to put it on the floor a safe distance away!

Finally it got to be bedtime, and Trey, who was really feeling like part of the pack, looked wistfully up the stairs after us as we ascended. I decided it was worth a try and carried him up. He went first to his bed by my desk but wasn't sure where to go when I headed to the bedroom. He paced and explored until I decided he was just too excited to sleep, so I carried him back downstairs to hang out with my partner.

Imagine my surprise when I woke some hours later and saw Trey curled up at the foot of our bed. He had climbed the stairs all by himself, and found himself a place to sleep. And that was that. He goes up and down the stairs now whenever he must and sleeps with the rest of the pack. Something huge changed for him that weekend, and I learned once again that good things happen when the family just spends time together. Our relationships grow when we feed them with time and attention.

We often give our attention to troubles and obstacles, to things that annoy us. Instead, feeding what we want to grow means that we give our attention to things that we want to have in our life. Many years back my partner and I were watching the now famous Bill Moyers interview with Joseph Campbell in a series called “The power of Myth”.

Campbell says to Moyer: “I always tell my students, go where your body and soul want to go. When you have the feeling, then stay with it, and don't let anyone throw you off.”
MOYERS asks: “What happens when you follow your bliss?”
CAMPBELL replies : “You come to bliss.”

I heard that remark at a powerful turning point in my life. I had just dropped out of grad school where I was studying to become an opera singer, and it seemed like the most important thing to do was to get a good job that would bring in a steady income and maybe even health insurance. I should get an office job like normal people, I thought. (whatever that means.) Can you imagine if I had done that? If what I had decided to feed was “being normal” and “getting a paycheck?” Instead I decided to feed that part of me that was curious about why things are the way they are, and what it all means. I fed it by carefully choosing the books I read, the adventures I had, and eventually with 4 years of seminary education. That part of myself that I fed eventually did grow, and became a minister. I am still feeding it, and it is still growing.

A woman came to me long ago for pastoral counseling. She told me that a co-worker was driving her CRAZY. You know how sometimes in your job situation or family, or maybe even here at the fellowship sometimes there will be a person who just rubs you the wrong way? My parishioner came and met with me several times about her conflict with this other woman. I asked her each time “what is good in your life? What are you doing to take care of yourself?” By our 3rd meeting on the topic of her difficult work relationship my parishioner could think of nothing good at all. She fed so much of her energy to this difficult relationship that it had grown and grown until there was room for nothing else in her heart. By counseling this woman I was able to see this tendency more clearly in my own life. When I get obsessed with, for example, how someone else in my house does or doesn’t do the dishes, this is a sign to me that there is probably something in my own life that I am not feeding. Whatever you feed will most likely grow- so be very careful about what you feed.

It’s not too hard to make the leap then to global politics. When Starhawk introduced this concept to us she asked “what if we had responded in this way to the events of 9-11 instead of responding with military might” in what she characterizes as the “nuke what annoys you” response. She asked- “what if instead of pouring resources into armed conflict, what if we had put that same amount of energy and support into our relationships with moderate Muslims and allies in those areas where terrorism had taken root?”

Going back to the garden she explained that in the Permaculture school of design you really want to avoid weeding. Usually the weeds serve some purpose, and if we plant the right plants and feed what we want to grow, the weeds won’t have an opportunity to take over. We asked her, thinking of movements like Occupy Wall street, and about the structures of power that are oppressive to many “don’t you sometimes have to weed?” Yes, she said, sometimes you do. But we must differential between people and structures. Sometimes structures need to be torn down, but there are people within them that we don’t have to demonize. When we weed we make room for new things to grow, and liberate energy and resources. When we tear down, she said, we must be careful of how we use the materials that made up the old structures, like when you tear down an old house.

She told us about the Gaza Freedom March she had attended in Egypt in the first days of 2010. They were supposed to enter Gaza through the Rafah border to meet with human rights groups to “bear witness to the continuing devastation” in Gaza. When they were not allowed to cross the border, they continued their protest in Egypt. There organizers were training grassroots communities in a school of organizing based on Gene Sharp’s work on non-violent struggle. Starhawk points out that when the people of Egypt rose up a year later everyone supposed it was just another protest, but in fact that organizing had been going on for years, starting in the poor neighborhoods and calling others to join them. Different news outlets calculate that somewhere between 500-800 folks died in the Egyptian uprising. But contrast those tragic deaths to these staggering numbers: over 4000 US service men and women and over 100,000 civilians who died in the Iraq war based on the Iraq war logs compiled by the US military.

The idea of “feeding what you want to grow” is that if we feed violence, what will grow is violence. If we feed nonviolent uprising and grassroots organizing, what will grow is non-violent uprising and grassroots uprising. You can see that this is a radical and subversive idea; it is not one adopted widely in our society. But the hope is that if you feed what you want to grow, what grows will be the very thing you wanted. Don’t take my word for it, try it in your life, and see what happens. Try it not just once, but consistently and patiently as you would care for a young child or a seedling in a garden. Notice what you are feeding and what is growing. May ladybugs and nonviolence, love, and harmony flourish in all our gardens.

Who Do You Say That I Am? (January 15, 2012)

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)

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.