Language of Reverence: Spirit of Life (September 15, 2013)

What makes us different from a smart phone?

What is it that we have in common with a tree?

Or let’s just ask the question at the heart of the matter- what is life?

We know it when we see it, right? When you see a tree in spring bursting out in those luminous bright green leaves, you know right away that something different is happening there than in the wooden fence that runs right by it. 

Now I know there  are some ambiguities on the margins of life that scientists and philosophers have been debating for millennia, but today I want to talk about life that is unmistakable. A child bursting onto the playground at recess. A turkey defending his territory. Us, here in this room together right now. 

Some have argued over the centuries that we, and other animals, are not that different from a machine- from a toaster or a smart phone. I think that is a semantic argument. Even a child can tell that we, and a turkey and a tree are different from a smartphone. Just because we have trouble explaining it doesn’t mean we don’t know it in our guts. 

One way I try to wrap my head around this is using systems theory. This is the way of looking at the world not as a collection of disparate parts, but as whole things. One principle of systems theory is that parts come together to make a system. Cells make up a body. Bacteria and beavers and fish and plants make up an eco-system. People make up a church. One of the characteristics of a system is that it has “emergent properties.” These are properties that the whole has that individual parts together don’t have. So for example if you put a bunch of brain cells in a petri dish, you don’t have  a brain. If you put a collection of organs together you don’t have a living being. A random collection of 30 people at bus stop is not a church. 

Lately when I hear the phrase “Spirit of Life” this is what I think of- that special quality that living things have that a toaster does not. Maybe  the “spirit of life” is an emergent property --  that which emerges from a system that does not emerge from a collection of disparate pieces.

Each Sunday in this church for the past several years we have sing “Spirit of Life” just as we did today. I suspect that not all of you thought of the emergent properties of systems when you sang that. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that each person in this room imagined something different when they sang those words. But in all the time I’ve been serving UU churches no one has ever complained that when they sung that song that they felt like a hypocrite.  There is a spaciousness about those words that leaves room for a lot of different beliefs.

For the past year we have been talking about a “Language of Reverence” for Unitarian Universalists -- a language that we could use to express deeper truths. We have wondered together whether the language we use shapes our ability to understand and communicate such truths. We have talked about words like “Prayer” and “conversion” – some of which are sticky words that bog us down with their layers of meaning and history. We’ve talked bout reclaiming those words as our own- they are part of our 400 year history, and they are ours as much as any other.

But today I suggest that there are also words that express important religious truths that feel a lot less sticky. Phrases that feel like ours. Yes, not only do we have the choice to reclaim those sticky words -- those traditional theological words --but we can build our own language of reverence. A colleague of mine, Scott Prinster, explained to me that the phrase “Spirit of life” (which I had assumed was  something UUs came up with in the 60s) has actually been used by Unitarian writers as early as the 1830s, and  that the phrase existed well back into the 1700s. 

One of the things I like about this phrase is that it is grounded in the world- in the life that we know. The first source of our living tradition is “direct experience” and life is something each one of us has experienced directly. Ours is a tradition that suggests we have a right to expect our own experience to harmonize with our theology. Ours is a faith that doesn’t require a leap between what we know and what we believe. 

“Spirit of life” draws a wide circle, one that can include atheists, agnostics and theists.  If someone from the church down the street here asked if I believed in God, I would not know whether to answer yes, no or maybe, because the word “God” means such a specific thing in each religious tradition. People have been killing one another for centuries over the exact meaning of that word. 

But I know with some certainty that I believe in the spirit of life. I’ve felt it every day. And I have seen it go- like when I saw the life pass from my dog Sandy – it was like a light had gone out in her eyes. It was unmistakable- it takes no theological leap to believe in life. 

But I do, in fact, make a theological leap- I believe that the divine is not separate from life. This is called Pantheism (a favorite heresy for both Jewish and Christian traditions)  -- God is all that exists, and this universe is not different from God. I recognized myself as a pantheist the first time I heard it from the pulpit at a UU church some 30 years ago. Then a teacher in Seminary introduced me to “Panentheism” which means that the universe is a sub-set of God—that is to say, God is the universe plus something more. When I was introduced to Systems theory, I got excited by the idea that the “something more” of panentheism is the emergent properties of  the system of all that is. Does the universe have consciousness?  I don’t know.  I am agnostic on that point.  But as a Universalist I believe in the one-ness of everything,  and when I hear that phrase “Spirit of Life” I don’t feel like an agnostic, because I have felt that spirit of life in my own body  and in the world every day. It is a phrase that brings us back from heady theological explorations -- back into the lived world we know and share. 

This summer, over in our historic Sheshequin meeting house, our worship team showed short films about the history of the universe, about its evolution. When you consider that epic story, it begins to seem kind of amazing that life not only came to be, but that it has persisted for so many hundreds of thousands of years. It has persisted through biological crises that killed off 70 or 90% of all life on our planet.  For example, photosynthesis only emerged 2,800 million years ago, a dramatic change that both saved and endangered life. You see, the oxygen freed in photosynthesis entered our world in larger and larger amounts,  changing the chemical composition of  the atmosphere, the oceans, the very crust of the earth. Oxygen not only degraded the food supply, but also broke down the membranes of cells, causing the helplessness and even the combustion of these early cells.  Then a new life form emerged with a mutation which allowed respiration.  Because oxygen was so plentiful, this new life and its offspring thrived.  The very oxygen which was poisoning the planet created a combustion which powered these new life forms’ activities. What an amazing story of life on earth snatched back from the brink of annihilation!

When I was studying the history of the Universe on my previous sabbatical we were introduced to the radical idea that the actual scientific story of who we are and where we came from could be as powerful as those myths and legends of our traditional cannon. I suppose I should not have been surprised by this idea. Growing up UU I had always been taught that the findings of science could be considered a source of wisdom--  the wisdom of the life we observe all around us.  

When Carolyn McDade wrote the song we sing each week, late one night in the early 1980s, she was driving her close friend Pat Simon home from a meeting for Central American solidarity...  What she remembers most clearly was the feeling she had. “When I got to Pat’s house, I told her, ‘I feel like a piece of dried cardboard that has lain in the attic for years. Just open wide the door, and I’ll be dust.’ I was tired, not with my community but with the world. She just sat with me, and I loved her for sitting with me.” McDade then drove to her own home in Newtonville. “I walked through my house in the dark, found my piano, and that was my prayer: May I not drop out. It was not written, but prayed. I knew more than anything that I wanted to continue in faith with the movement.”[i]

Spirit of Life, come unto me.
Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion.
Blow in the wind, rise in the sea;
Move in the hand, giving life the shape of justice.
Roots hold me close; wings set me free;
Spirit of Life, come to me, come to me.

In this song, in this very personal prayer, here is the point where our conversation turns from an abstract one about theology to a more practical concern- what do I call on, what do I turn to when I am “like a piece of dried cardboard that has lain in the attic for years?” What can we turn to not only for ourselves, but so that we can continue to live with compassion and work for justice in our world? Can we who are Atheist and Agnostic about a traditional understanding of God, can there be some hope for us in life itself?

In considering the emergence of  life forms that first photosynthesized or breathed air and whether or not these life forms had any consciousness of this amazing process, scientists Swimme and Berry write that “A primitive eukaryotic cell would, for instance, be able to detect a temperature gradient, turning itself toward warming regions.  It would possess a limited ability to sense nutrient densities and orient itself to their thickest direction.”[1]  So even our most basic ancestors must have been guided  by some life-sustaining drive. 

This drive brings to mind the words of Lebanese poet, artist and writer  Kahlil Gibran “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and the daughters of  Life's longing for itself" … Life’ s longing for itself. I know that feeling. I have experienced it in my bones. I don’t understand it, but I know it. For me that longing of life for life is bound up in the phrase “Spirit of Life.”  One of the things we know for sure about life, is that it fights with great tenacity and creativity to keep on living. Not only the individual fighting for its own life, but our shared desire that even when each one of is gone, that life itself should persist.

 I find genuine hope in the indisputable fact that when life on earth was running out of food and on the brink of collapse, somehow photosynthesis was born. And when Photosynthesis inundated the earth with  this poisonous gas called oxygen, life learned to breathe it. That’s the spirit of life. Seeing a tree (that for all the world looked dead during the winter) begin to burst out with those amazing spring green leaves- that requires no leap of faith. It is hope embodied.

Here’s another fact- you are alive. Right now.  Right in this moment. Whatever it is that brings a tree out of dormancy in the spring, whatever it is that evolved photosynthesis, that “spirit of life”  is indisputably within you. So how much of a leap is it to believe that we can call on that “spirit of life” – not as some transcendent spirit from above, but as that which is intrinsic to all living beings –we can reach down deep into ourselves as a tree reaches down deep into its roots at the end of winter, and we can call it up when want to come back from our own winter, when we are dry as a piece of cardboard. 

The Unitarian writers who were using the phrase “Spirit of Life” in the 1830s did not yet have the benefit of Darwin’s “Origin of Species.” They undoubtedly would not have explained it the way I just did. But that’s part of why this is part of our vocabulary of faith – because it is expansive enough to include the old traditional theologies, and all that science has uncovered in the last century or so. Regardless of your theology, this song reminds us that there is something larger than ourselves we can call one when we are dry, when we need hope. It is laying in your own beating heart right now.

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[1] Briane Swimme and Thomas Berry, The Universe Story. New York: HarperCollins, 1992; p. 104.

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[i] http://www.uuworld.org/life/articles/35893.shtml Carolyn McDade's spirit of life By Kimberly French
Fall 2007 8.18.07

A Hobbit's Adventure (August 25, 2013)

First Reading

The Bagginses had lived in the neighbourhood of The Hill for time out of mind, and people considered them very respectable, not only because most of them were rich, but also because they never had any adventures or did anything unexpected: you could tell what a Baggins would say on any question without the bother of asking him. This is a story of how a Baggins had an adventure, and found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected.

Second Reading
The next day he had almost forgotten about Gandalf. He did not remember things very well, unless he put them down on his Engagement Tablet: like this: Gandalf Tea Wednesday. Yesterday he had been too flustered to do anything of the kind. Just before tea-time there came a tremendous ring on the front-door bell, and then he remembered! He rushed and put on the kettle, and put out another cup and saucer, and an extra cake or two, and ran to the door. “I am so sorry to keep you waiting!” he was going to say, when he saw that it was not Gandalf at all. It was a dwarf with a blue beard tucked into a golden belt, and very bright eyes under his dark-green hood. As soon as the door was opened, he pushed inside, just as if he had been expected. He hung his hooded cloak on the nearest peg, and “Dwalin at your service!” he said with a low bow. “Bilbo Baggins at yours!” said the hobbit, too surprised to ask any questions for the moment. When the silence that followed had become uncomfortable, he added: “I am just about to take tea; pray come and have some with me.” A little stiff perhaps, but he meant it kindly. And what would you do, if an uninvited dwarf came and hung his things up in your hall without a word of explanation? They had not been at table long, in fact they had hardly reached the third cake, when there came another even louder ring at the bell. “Excuse me!” said the hobbit, and off he went to the door. … there was a very old-looking dwarf on the step with a white beard and a scarlet hood; and he too hopped inside as soon as the door was open, just as if he had been invited. “I see they have begun to arrive already,” he said when he caught sight of Dwalin’s green hood hanging up. He hung his red one next to it, and “Balin at your service!” he said with his hand on his breast. “Thank you!” said Bilbo with a gasp. It was not the correct thing to say, but they have begun to arrive had flustered him badly. He liked visitors, but he liked to know them before they arrived, and he preferred to ask them…

Already it had almost become a throng. Some called for ale, and some for porter, and one for coffee, and all of them for cakes; so the hobbit was kept very busy for a while. A big jug of coffee had just been set in the hearth, the seed-cakes were gone, and the dwarves were starting on a round of buttered scones, when there came—a loud knock. …Bilbo rushed along the passage, very angry, and altogether bewildered and bewuthered—this was the most awkward Wednesday he ever remembered. He pulled open the door with a jerk, and they all fell in, one on top of the other. More dwarves, four more! And there was Gandalf behind, leaning on his staff and laughing.

The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

-- Jelaluddin Rumi,
translation by Coleman Barks


Sermon
Bilbo Baggins is a most unlikely hero. He is short, and a little plump, and loves nothing more than a quiet day at home, smoking his pipe, having a cup of tea. This is a protagonist I can identify with. “He liked visitors, but he liked to know them before they arrived, and he preferred to ask them.” How I empathize with Bilbo when 13 uninvited guests tumble in at tea time. In most stories of epic adventure the hero is not bewildered and bewuthered by something as ordinary as unexpected guests, or the prospect of running out of seed cakes. Most unlikely indeed.

For those of you who haven’t read the book, or who read it many years ago, Gandolf and all those dwarves are just about to embark on an adventure to reclaim the mountain that was their ancestral home (and all the treasure therein, from the dragon that stole it generations ago and who has hoarded it ever since. They have come to Bilbo’s hobbit hole to hire him as a burglar. Gandolf, the wizard, tells Bilbo: 

“I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it’s very difficult to find anyone.” To which Bilbo replies: “I should think so—in these parts! We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner! I can’t think what anybody sees in them”... “We don’t want any adventures here, thank you! You might try over The Hill or across The Water.” By this he meant that the conversation was at an end.

I recognize myself in Bilbo. I love my snug home, I love to have things planned just so, and if I had to choose between a long adventure into the mountains to steal gold from a dragon, or a morning curled up with a book infront of the fire, I feel confident I would respond just as Bilbo did “We don’t want any adventures here, thank you.”

I also admit that this is kind of an unlikely text for a service in this historic Sheshequin Universalist church. So I ask you to enter into this text with me as a metaphor for our own life’s journey, not only physical but also spiritual. Generally speaking folks tend to build themselves a theological hobbit hole, one that is comfortable and safe, and settle in for the duration. Religious educator Gerome Berryman calls this a “theological circle” and there is no reason to venture outside of this theological circle unless it is broken. There are, he tells us, two ways such a circle can be opened. One is by tragedy- something happens to us that just cannot be explained and supported by the theology we have been dwelling inside of; our circle of beliefs is ruptured. But sometimes we make the choice to go on a theological adventure, to consciously open our circle and enter the wider world.

But Bilbo is right- adventures are “disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!” It is counter-intuitive to leave your comfort zone, whether a cozy hobbit hole or a system of beliefs. It is inherantly disturbing and uncomfortable. Right at the beginning of his journey, when Bilbo first rushes out to join the dwarves on their adventure, he has a shocking realization:

“I’m awfully sorry,” said Bilbo, “but I have come without my hat, and I have left my pocket-handkerchief behind, and I haven’t got any money. I didn’t get your note until after 10.45 to be precise.”

“Don’t be precise,” said Dwalin, “and don’t worry! You will have to manage without pocket-handkerchiefs, and a good many other things, before you get to the journey’s end."

To go on an adventure we have to give up not only our metaphoric pocket- handkerchief, but also our precision, our mastery of the little world we usually inhabit. Adults hate this. We worked so hard and long to grow a mastery of our lives, and we are just not used to being unprepared, being imprecise, being without our tools. By the end of the first day of journeying, Tolkein writes that: “just at that moment [Bilbo] felt more tired than he ever remembered feeling before. He was thinking once again of his comfortable chair before the fire in his favourite sitting-room in his hobbit-hole, and of the kettle singing. Not for the last time!” Bilbo, the reluctant hero, gives us a new model for approaching adventures that tumble in our front door. He illustrates how even one who loves the quiet life, who would naturally choose bacon and scones over dragon’s gold any day can still have an adventure. So my thought here this morning is not to convince you that adventures are “all pony-rides in May-sunshine” but to inquire whether an adventure might be worth it, even for respectable hobbits.

Bilbo feels something of a fraud as he first sets out with this band of mostly strangers. He has been hired as a burglar, a job with which he has no experience. He must, very quickly prove to his party and to himself that he can do the job he has been hired to do. But as they encounter trolls, or goblins, or wolves, dark forests, huge spiders or tall mountains, and eventually a dragon guarding a pile of gold, Bilbo begins to learn what his talents are- he can be very quiet and stealthy, is clever in a pinch, and eventually emerges as a leader of the group. By the time they reach the mountain where the dragon hordes the stolen gold his comrades “had come to respect little Bilbo. Now he had become the real leader in their adventure. He had begun to have ideas and plans of his own.” Bilbo found a role in this adventure that was truly his own- one that none of his companions could play.

When I first read the book, I assumed that, like in most adventure stories, Bilbo would be the one to slay the dragon (because really, you can’t steal a pile of gold out from under a dragon who has already destroyed a dwarf stronghold to get that hoard in the first place). I was quite surprised when it turned out that (spoiler alert) an archer from the port town across from the mountain aims the fatal arrow. No, Bilbo’s role is not that of the usual hero. But when the dwarves and men and elves begin to fight over the treasure, as is so often the way, it is Bilbo who decides to give up the valuable “arkenstone” he had stolen from the dragon:

“This is the Arkenstone of Thrain,” said Bilbo, “the Heart of the Mountain; and it is also the heart of Thorin. He values it above a river of gold. I give it to you. It will aid you in your bargaining.” Then Bilbo, not without a shudder, not without a glance of longing, handed the marvellous stone to Bard, and he held it in his hand, as though dazed.

Though Thorin, king of the dwarves, is initially furious at this duplicity, as faces death, he says to Bilbo: “There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”

This the crux of the whole thing I think. First, that there is “more in you of good than you know;” Unitarian Universalists tend to think this is true of each one of us. We have this great potential for good that often goes untapped. If we didn’t have to face goblins, spiders, dragons or the very real trials we face in our real, human lives, we might never have a chance to see that good, that courage, that wisdom in ourselves.

Moreover, there are some things in this world that can only be done by the very particular person that we are. In this case those very traits that made Bilbo an unlikely hero, are the ones that allowed Bilbo his special role in this story; valuing “food and cheer and song above hoarded gold.”

But wait, some of you are undoubtedly saying, what about the ring? Because while the ring our burglar Bilbo steals from the strange creature Gollum plays only the role of a useful tool in this book, it is the crux of the whole battle for middle earth in the “Lord of the Rings” series. In the same way that Bilbo has no idea of the role this ring will play in the fate of middle earth, when Tolkein wrote “The Hobbit” in 1932, he had no idea it would become so popular, nor that he would be asked to write a sequel- the epic story “the Lord of the Rings.” Sometimes our paths are circuitous and strange. The sparkle we stoop to examine on one adventure (or win in a riddle contest- depending on which edition you read) can lead to unimaginable future adventures. Whether you believe in fate or chance, way leads on to way, one journey leads to another. One adventure can change us, can change the world.
 
Because the other thing about adventures, is that when you finally come home again, you are changed:

“It is true that for ever after [Bilbo] remained an elf-friend, and had the honour of dwarves, wizards, and all such folk as ever passed that way; but he was no longer quite respectable. He was in fact held by all the hobbits of the neighbourhood to be ‘queer’—except by his nephews and nieces on the Took side, but even they were not encouraged in their friendship by their elders. I am sorry to say he did not mind. He was quite content; and the sound of the kettle on his hearth was ever after more musical than it had been even in the quiet days before the Unexpected Party.”

This reminds me of a recent article by my seminary professor Jeremy Taylor who writes that with

“the dreamer's increasing awareness of the deeper, non-material sources of meaning and value in waking life, (which is one way of defining "individuation") … it is not at all unusual to find that these increasingly conscious understandings lead to less interest in "small talk" and "cocktail conversation" - that which lubricates the wheels of social acceptance… This can look like loneliness and separation from those we are close to in waking life.” Taylor describes an “archetypal separation which is very often one of the inevitable… consequences of increasingly successful individuation. At the same time that …[we] celebrate the achievements and joys of deeper spiritual awareness, they can also remind the dreamer of a price that such developments so often require - a loss, or at least a lessening of the "barn warmth" of the "puppy pile."

Perhaps this is why we gather together these Sunday mornings in religious community. Because sometimes the understandings, the experiences of our adventures, be they physical or spiritual, change us, and we want to be with others who are willing to engage with us “the achievements and joys of deeper spiritual awareness.” At its best, this community is one where even when we return from our adventures changed, we are still welcomed home.

It occurred to me as I was watching the new “Hobbit” movie, that our valley maybe a little like the Shire. It is not often a destination for world travelers, like Paris or San Francisco. It is not a center of Fashion and finance like New York City. But I see a little of this congregation in those words “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoard gold, it would be a merrier world.” Though not all of us can slay the dragon, each of us has a special role to play in this adventure. There are a lot of epic stories happening in the world right now: the struggle to preserve wild places and species, the adventure of preserving true democracy, the venture to end hunger, the journey towards ending oppression. And there are private adventures in our own lives- finding meaning in tragedy, forgiving betrayal, triumphing over addiction, the journey of living with authenticity and integrity.

So when the unexpected visitors show up at your door inviting you to join them in their adventure, consider doing as Rumi suggests and “meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.”

Language of Reverence: Conversion (June 16, 2013)

John Newton had, by any standard, a rough start in life. His mother died when he was only seven, and his father left him with a step-mother he hardly knew while away at sea, and then shipped him off to a boarding school where he was tormented. At age 11 he went to sea with his father, who was an English shipmaster in the Mediterranean. At age 18 Newton was taken pressed into service in the Royal Navy as a midshipman. When he tried to dessert he was whipped 8 dozen times in front of the crew, and demoted to common seaman. This experience was so mortifying and painful for him that he considered suicide. Then, while his ship was sailing to India Newton transferred to a new ship, the Pegasus, a ship that imported goods West Africa then took slaves on the return voyage. Apparently even on this new ship Newton was just not a team player, and so he was left with the slave dealer who “gave him” to an African duchess. Finally in 1748, when he was 23, his father asked a sea captain to search for him, and Newton was rescued.

It was on his trip back to England on a ship called the Greyhound that he had the conversion experience described in the song “Amazing Grace.” The ship came upon a storm so severe, that the ship began to fill with water. Newton “called out to God” to save them. A piece of Cargo drifted into a position which stopped up the hole and the ship was saved. On the rest of the trip Newton began to read the bible and other Christian tracts, and when he reached England he formally converted to evangelical Christianity. He gave up gambling and drinking, and eventually became a preacher.[i]

This is the quintessential conversion story, is it not? In a moment of despair a frightened soul reaches out for God, and his life is changed forever. And Newton had his conversion to an evangelical Christianity, like so many we hear about on the Family Life network, or from our friends and neighbors. But I would like to propose that it is possible to have a UU Conversion. The word “Conversion” comes from the Latin root Vertere- to turn.[ii] As a people who believe in spiritual growth, we know that being able to turn is important. We know that it is possible to grow up with one set of ideas, and then to realize in adulthood that those dearly held beliefs (the fancy word for this is “Theological Circle”) no longer fits your experience of life. Sometimes this happens because we are reading new books, or stretching ourselves to consider new ideas. Sometimes this happens when tragedy strikes and our old ideas cannot sustain us through these difficult times. Whether it comes to us through our own searching or through tragedy, almost always turning is painful. A turning of mind and heart is not easy but as the author Anais Nin wrote “the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Sometimes blossoming means rupturing that theological circle, so that a new circle can evolve, a larger circle that holds our next experiences, our new wisdom.
 
Change hardly ever happens all at once, though. So perhaps I should not have been surprised to find that even after this amazing conversion Newton did not give up working in the slave trade. Newton took a job on a slave ship called Brownlow in 1748 and on the first part of the voyage he came down with a horrible fever, which lead him to a second conversion experience where he “asked God to take control of his destiny.” It was at this time he said he “felt totally at peace with God.”

We like to think once we’ve had that conversion experience, once we’ve turned, we are finally set once and for all. But in point of fact no circle will be big enough to hold us all our lives. As we grow we need our wisdom to grow with us.

When I was installed at the Palo Alto church, I asked my mentor Geoff Rimositis to offer the “Charge to the minister” and with the charge he delivered that day he gave me a compass. Geoff was a backpacker, and one of the best things about the youth program at his church was that each summer he and the other minister would take all their Jr. high kids out on a week-long backpacking trip to start the new year together. So Geoff knew something about the importance of a compass and as an MRE of over 20 years he knew and still knows something about finding your way as a minster. He pointed out that there are two kinds of north on the compass, magnetic north and true north. And he advised that sometimes in our lives we lose track of true north. That really resonated for me- the truth that throughout our lives we are constantly turning and re-turning to find our way back to true north.

Another minister I look up to, Brian Jessup, said his mission in both life and ministry was the “Constant conversion of my heart to love and to justice” . This also has stuck with me now for over a decade because it reminds me that conversion is not a one-time deal, but something that is available to us every moment in which we choose true north. Every moment we can turn from whatever path we are on, toward love, toward Justice.

Well, even after Newton’s second, true conversion, did he give up working in the slave trade? No. He made three more voyages, now as captain of slaving ships until 1754. And even after having a stroke that caused him to leave seafaring, he still invested in slave ships. Finally in 1757 he applied to become a minister, and it turned out to be something he was good at. He became known for his pastoral care, and as a compelling evangelical preacher. In 1779 he wrote the words to the famous song “Amazing Grace.”

It wasn’t until 1788, 24 years after leaving the slave trade, that Newton published a book called “Thoughts upon the slave trade” which described the horrible conditions of the Middle passage. He offered "a confession, which ... comes too late ... It will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me, that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders." He became a lobbyist for abolishing the slave trade, living to see the “Slave Trade Act of 1807” passed in parliament just before he died that very year.
American Buddhist Teacher Jack Kornfield puts this in a way that makes a lot of sense to me – he says “After The Ecstasy, The Laundry” After these moments of clarity and insight, there we are with our ordinary mundane lives. Laundry needs to be done, bills have to be paid. Just because your heart has been turned, doesn’t mean your partner has, or your friends, or your boss. The way forward can be confusing after a turn of heart. I had always heard the story of Amazing Grace told as if in one moment, during that storm at sea Newton had reached out in prayer, and in one moment -- “The hour I first believed” -- had been both converted in faith and turned to renounce the slave trade. In fact that turning took a lifetime. Says Wendell berry:

“whatever is foreseen in joy
Must be lived out from day to day.
Vision held open in the dark
By our ten thousand days of work.”[iii]

That work Newton did in the pulpit, in parliament, in writing about his experiences of the slave trade. It took him some 40 years to fully live out that turning. Berry goes on to say:

“And yet no leaf or grain is filled
By work of ours; the field is tilled
And left to grace. That we may reap
Great work is done while we’re asleep”

 Grace. Oh My. Now we’ve come to another one of those sticky words--Grace. In traditional Christianity Grace is a divine gift, given not because we have earned it or deserve it, but in an outpouring of generosity. There’s nothing in the story of Newton’s early life that show us he deserved special favor. He was a gambler, a drinker, a slave trader, and apparently kind of a jerk; he was so hard to deal with he was abandoned in Africa. And Yet…And yet when he cried out from the depth of his fear and pain, something happened for him. Something turned. This is especially important for us Universalists, the idea that salvation is available to anyone, that any one of us can convert our hearts to love and to justice, no matter what unprincipled jerks we’ve been in the past.

AND- and here is the hard part- this idea of Grace suggests that help is available. This idea is found not just in Christianity, but in all the faith traditions I have studied- that when you have even had the thought “Could I turn?” that with the first thought “I WANT to turn” that is the divine calling to us, helping us find our way. The great Universalist preacher Hosea Ballou believed that people would turn toward God because God called to us, wooed us, because divine goodness shines out to us. Berry helps us understand that Grace is there for atheists as well. “No leaf or grain is filled by work of ours” he writes. And anyone who has planted a garden knows this. It is hard work. We till the soil, we sow the seeds, we water, and then we wait. We hope. We leave it to grace, and so often those tiny seeds grow into a tomato plant, into a rambling zucchini vine that gives and gives, that feeds us and our families. That’s what my garden looks like right now- a bed of soil interrupted periodically by little seedlings waiting for grace.

Conversion is deciding to plant the seed. Those who tend their garden day by day, water those seeds, weed, are more likely to see this new life grow into something that will nourish them in time to come. That same grace, the grace that turned an unprincipled jerk into a reformer who worked to end the slave trade, the same grace that turns a tiny seed into a zucchini plant that rambles and gives and gives, that same grace is there for each of us each time we look deep into ourselves and ask “am I headed true north? Is there more that I can be?”

Life is confusing. It is easy to get lost among the many voices in the world calling to us to follow them—lost among the many voices in our own mind and heart pointing in different directions. Conversion, at its best, is finding true north and turning towards it; “I once was lost but now am found, Was blind, but now I see.” And anyone who has sailed a ship or hiked an unmarked trail knows that it is not just one turning, but a turning again and again back to true north, a constant conversion of the heart to love and to justice. I want you to know this morning, that conversion is not just something that happens to our evangelical neighbors, it is there for us as well. That turning of the heart back toward true north is always available to us whenever we are lost.

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[i] Most of this retelling comes from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Newton

[ii] http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=convert&allowed_in_frame=0 

[iii] A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems, 1979-1997 By Wendell Berry