UUFE Sermon Sampler

Sermons Presented at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship at Easton, Maryland

2012-07-28T19:01:00.001-04:00

This is a sampler of sermons presented Sundays at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship at Easton, Maryland. They represent the broad spectrum of faith found at the fellowship, whose members are committed to a responsible search for truth and meaning.

Unitarian Universalism is a faith for those who want the freedom to develop their own religious values and beliefs without being bound by creed or dogma. These are the Principles and Purposes that we share:

- The inherent worth and dignity of every person.

- Justice, equity and compassion in human relations.

- Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregation.

- A free and responsible search for truth and meaning.

- The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregation and in society at large

- The goal of world peace, liberty and justice for all.

- Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

We encourage our neighbors to consider the Fellowship as their spiritual home. The Fellowship is located at:

7401 Ocean Gateway (US 50)
Across from Easton HS stadium
Easton, Maryland

Worship Services (with child care): Sunday, 10:00 am

Visit our fellowship’s informational web site at http://www.uufeaston.org/ . Or contact:

UUFE President
Nancy Sawyer
ndimonds@gmail.com

Membership Chair
Gail Woodall
gbwoodall@goeaston.net

Disclaimer and Copyright Notice: Sermons presented here are the copyrighted material and express the personal views of the author/presenter, and not the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship at Easton or the Unitarian Universalist Association. Permission to copy or distribute sermon text must be obtained from the author.

Marriage Equality

2012-01-09T21:14:00.000-05:00

Sermon by Rev. Gabrielle Parks

The UUA’s campaign “Standing on the Side of Love” hasproclaimed “Thirty Days of Love” for the time period from Martin Luther King,Jr.’s birthday on January 16 to Valentine’s Day, February 14. It is acollective visioning process. UU’s areencouraged to engage in self-reflection, active listening, sharing personal andcommunity stories, and to celebrate their heroes for their courageous love. ThirtyDays of Love will also offer daily, direct actions for love. If you want toknow more, you can check out the SSL website’s calendar to guide you through ameaningful month, or go to http://www.standingonthesideoflove.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/30-DAYS-OF-LOVE-Theological-Reflection-Guide.pdffor some theological reflections on the theme.

This past year has opened up tremendous new opportunitiesfor us to demonstrate where we stand. Just last week, Time Magazine named its2011 “Person of theYear.” You know the winner was “The protester” – from thedemonstrators across the Arab world to the Occupy Wall Street movement that continuesto make headlines. Time managing editor Richard Stengel said on NBC television:“There’s this contagion of protest. These are folks who are changing historyalready and they will change history in the future.” Standing on the Side ofLove is about far more than just protests – it’s about a movement that beginswith our selves, and is rooted in our congregations and communities. It’s amovement that translates our faith in a better, more loving world into individual and collective actions;actions for those who are marginalized and discriminated against because oftheir identity. And yes, it’s a movement of tremendous activism!

Getting involved and showing where we stand on issues hasbecome especially poignant for us here in Maryland. Once again our elected leaderswill have an opportunity to legalize same-sex marriage in our state. We gotclose last year, but not quite close enough. We need to make sure that thisyear brings us a better outcome!

We all know that there is a strong movement against same sexmarriage from diverse religious groups and individuals. I will talk about thatin a moment. But I want to share my opinion first: Marriage is a civil right,and as such should not be influenced by religious opinion at all. The U.S. is acountry whose constitution proclaims the separation of church and state, afterall! A marriage license is a sign of citizenship, just like adriver’s license, a passport, and a social security card. In this land thathonors freedom and equality, on what basis can we deny some this important signof citizenship?

I could stop right there. But I don’t want to avoid adialogue with people who have different opinions, and neither should you.

As religious folks, especially as UU’s, it is important thatwe are open to the viewpoints of others, and that we are informed enough to beable to discuss the religious aspects of the question. You can start by adoptingthe religious language that your Christian friend or relative may be using. Forexample, you could say that in your opinion, homophobia, not homosexuality, is a sin. And, that love is a giftfrom God. No loving God would give anyone a gift in order to punish orhumiliate them.

Further you couldargue that the covenant of marriage is a sacred trust between two individuals.Any couple able to forge that bond deserves the legal benefits of marriage aswell as the ability to express that sacred trust freely and equally in oursociety.

You can go evenfurther in having a meaningful dialogue when your Christian friend tellsyou that he can’t be in favor of same sex marriage because of what the Bible saysabout homosexuality and about marriage. With a little bit of information youcan hold your own in a good discussion.

Peoplewho raise the question of Biblical authority typically point to three or four passagesin Genesis, Leviticus, and the letters of Paul. These texts have been thesource of intense debate among scholars in the last few decades. Actually, in recent years a consensus has beenemerging. For example, theologians now are certain that the passage in Genesisassociated with Sodom does not refer tohomosexuality at all; most scholars believe the big “sin of Sodom” was a failure to exhibit hospitalityto strangers. Just because the word “Sodom”has been associated with homosexuality in history, should not deter us from amuch more critical reading of the text. Throughout the Old Testament theinjunction to show hospitality to strangers is lifted up as a high value. Manythoughtful readers of the text now believe that the sin of Sodom is violent treatment of the stranger,the abuse of the guest, not homosexual behavior between two loving partners.

Themost commonly quoted argument against same-sex relationships is in Leviticus,where it clearly states that a man lying with another man is an “abomination.”However, this statement is mingled with numerous other prohibitions aboutdietary, liturgical, sexual, and ethical matters which no one today believesare binding for Christians.

In yourdiscussion with your Christian friend you might want to ask him on what basishe selects a verse or two on homosexuality as valid and how he can privilegesome passages in Leviticus, while dispensing with many, indeed most others? Letme just give you a few examples of other prohibitions in Leviticus, fromchapters 18-20:

"Don't wearclothes woven of two kinds of material.

"Don't cut thehair on the sides of your head or trim your beard.

"Don't tattooyourselves.

"Any and everyperson who curses his father or mother must be put to death.

Maybeyour discussion partner will recognize that many opponents of same-sex marriageare using external cultural values to determine which text remains ineffect, and which texts do not.

In theNew Testament, Paul’s admonitions against homosexual behavior seem clear, butone has to consider that he was writing at a time when no one had any conceptof anything called sexual orientation. What Paul was writing about washomosexual relationships between men and boys, a not uncommon practice inthe ancient world. He was not talking about long-term, committedrelationships between two adults.

But what about the Bible’s affirmation of marriage? Actually, the Bible doesn’t say much about marriage either,particularly if we think only of the “traditional marriage” of one man and onewoman of the last few centuries.

Thesame Hebrew Bible that includes prohibitions about homosexuality in Leviticusoffers models of family that include multiple wives. Jesus’ own genealogy inMatthew is filled with non-traditional relationships. However, the NewTestament does include strong admonitions against divorce, including Jesus’words that to divorce and remarry is to commit adultery.

Whiledivorce is certainly not celebrated in our churches today, it is clearlyaccepted as a difficult and deeply disappointing step that is sometimesnecessary and that should not separate a Christian from the care and love ofthe church. And no one who discovers new love after the pain of divorce isaccused by our pastors of being an adulterer. Do Christians who divorce fail totake the Bible seriously? Or do they read the texts about divorce in thecontext of the whole Biblical message about a Gospel of forgiveness and grace?

As youcan see, the Bible says very little about homosexuality and marriage. And muchof our traditional interpretation of those few texts is, at the very least,suspect.

However,the Bible does say a great deal about covenanted relationships. Fidelity, nothomosexuality, is at the heart of the Gospel, and the call to fidelity is agift and a discipline that makes as much sense for same gender couples as forheterosexual couples. Isn’t this what religious people should focus on?

Lookingback in history, it becomes clear that we need to approach scripture in newways. After all, there was a time when Christians believed the Bible condonedslavery. There was a time when Christians believed the Bible prohibited womenfrom offering certain kinds of leadership in the church. In each case a fewpassages were identified to “prove” the point. But as Christians began tolisten more carefully to the whole of Scripture, new insights emerged. It is important to recognizethat interpretations change in light of new understandings, that to embrace newinsights is not necessarily to abandon scripture, but rather to read scripturein the light of life’s new challenges and opportunities.

And nowI’ll let Dave Hackett from the UU Legislative Ministry talk to you about whatyou can actually DO to help make same-sex marriage legal in MD.

Our Place in the Cosmos

2012-01-08T21:18:00.000-05:00

Sermon by Dr. Forrest Hall, guest speaker:

Pick a number! No,not just any number, the largest number you’ve ever heard of. How about the U.S. national debt. This morning abit over 15 trillion dollars and climbing! 15 trillion followed to the rightby12 zeros, then a decimal place. Inscientific language we say, 10 to the twelfth. How big is 15 trillion? Well, ifyou counted out 15 trillion dollars counting 5 one-dollar bills per second, itwould take you 3 trillion seconds or about 35 million years to finish.

Have you heard anyone use the number one quadrillion? That’sa 1 followed by fifteen zeros or 10 to the fifteenth. I’d be willing to bet you have never heardthe number one googol. That’s a onefollowed by one hundred zeros or 10¹⁰⁰! So what? Who would ever need a number likethat?

When NASA used the space telescope HUBBLE to count thenumber of galaxies in the visible universe, we first counted one hundred andfifty billion galaxies! When later astronauts flew to HUBBLE and installed ahigher resolution camera we then counted 20 times that number or 3,000 billion,or 3 trillion galaxies. The Milky Waygalaxy contains about 2 billion stars. So a rough estimates of the total starcount in all 3000 billion galaxies within our visible universe is roughly 6billion trillion stars, or 6 quadrillion stars– give or take a few. If we assume that each of those sixquadrillion stars has roughly the same number of atoms as our sun, we get avery rough estimate of 10¹⁰⁰ atoms in the universe. Not a gaggle of geese but a googol of atoms. Ok, nowthere is a practical use for the number, one googol. At your next party, youcan liven up a conversation saying, “Did you know there is a googol of atoms inour universe?”

How our view of our place in the cosmos has changed in justthree centuries ago. Galileo didn’t even know about atoms, and thought theuniverse consisted of just the sun, a few planets that orbited about the sunand a few stars he could see with his new telescope. In the next couple of centuries the humanimagination was stretched -- almost to the breaking point – we are now forcedto comprehend a universe containing a googol of atoms constituting sixquadrillion stars.

The next shocker is that only 4% of the matter and energy inthe universe is observable. The other96% that we can’t observe we call “Dark”, meaning that we can’t see it.

Ok. Now get ready toflex your mind in the other direction – from the unimaginably large to theunimaginably small.

We also know that the galaxies we can see -- all those sixtrillion stars, their hydrogen and helium, were once all contained in a volumemuch smaller than the period at the end of a sentence. How much smaller? A billion, billion, billion, billion timessmaller. To be exact, a dot with adiameter less than 10^-35meters. 10^-35 is math shorthandfor a number starting with a zero, then a decimal place, followed by thirtyfour zeros to the RIGHT ending in the numeral one.

That’s small!!!! But, in the beginning, everything in theuniverse was squeezed into that dot! Whoa, wait a minute you are probably thinking. He’d better explain how we know that.

How do we know? Nomatter in which direction we point our powerful telescope, whether it’s in thesouthern or the northern hemisphere, or out from the equator, or the north orsouth poles, we see every one of those one billion galaxies moving directlyaway from us. And fast! And the further away from us a galaxy is, the faster itmoves away. And they have been moving away. Why? And how do we know why?

We know from Einstein’s theory of General Relativity -- youknow, the guy with frizzy hair and mustache who brought you the famous formulaE=MC² -- that all the galaxies and their stars are racing directlyaway from us because the space in which they are embedded is itselfexpanding.

We normally think ofspace as the absence of something – totally empty. But that is anillusion. We just can’t see what isthere. Dark matter & dark energy. Einstein’s theory of General Relativity says that energy, mass, spaceand time are really one thing, and that mass can cause mass to contract, andenergy can cause it to expand. The dark energy filling the universe is causingspace to expand.

The best analogy is raisin bread baking in the oven. Space is the dough, and the galaxies are theraisins. When we bake bread, we beginwith a ball of dough say the size of a golf ball. But when the bread isfinished baking, it’s much larger. In an oven, heat energy causes the yeast in the dough to create bubbles,expanding or rising the dough. In theuniverse, the energy causing the expansion of space is dark energy. Like yeastin the dough, dark energy fills all the space in the universe. Every grain ofit! Dark energy is in other words, theyeast of the cosmos. Anyway, from ourgalactic raisin and our tiny planet Earth located in the Milky Way raisin, welook outward and in no matter which direction we look, all the other raisins,all the other galaxies are rushing away from us as space expands. This is the aftermathof the Big Bang when someone or something turned on the cosmic oven.

Using physics and observations, we can run the universebackward in time to see how it all must have begun. When we look at a distantgalaxy we are in effect looking back in time because the further away a galaxyis, the longer it takes for its light to reach us here. By looking our farenough with powerful telescopes, we can see almost to the beginning of time,13.75 billion years ago. And what we find is that all that we now see was thencontained in a dot no larger than 10^-35 meters in diameter. In otherwords, when we run the cosmic movie backward, the rising bread shrinks to thesize of a nearly infinitesimal dot with an unimaginably high temperature -- abillion, trillion degrees. Now there is one hot oven!!! Before that physics doesn’t really apply sowe don’t and cannot know what happened before the Big Bang.

That is the stuff of true mystery, the unknowable.

The physics of cosmology tells us that in the beginning, 10^-43seconds to be exact, just after somehow the heat was turned on by the Big Bang,the size of the cosmic dough ball was not the size of a golf ball, not the sizeof a period at the end of a sentence, but no larger than a dot 10^-35m in diameter.

Like every raisin inthe rising loaf of raisin bread, our raisin, the Milky Way appears to be at thevery center of the visible universe. Everywhere we look every galaxy arerushing away from us. Every raisin,every galaxy is also at the center of this expansion because space is expandinguniformly everywhere. Another Whew!!!

How big is the visibleuniverse? Simply put, it’s the size that we can see – and that is not limited by the power of ourtelescope. The size of the visible universe is determined by the basic laws ofphysics. And that is, how far light cantravel since the first stars were created. We cannot see any galaxy further away than that no matter how powerfulthe telescope. Their light has not hadtime to reach Earth. And that distance is roughly 10²⁸ meters – Thenumber 10 followed by 28 zeros.

In other words, we have reached our scientific horizons,limited, not by the power of our tools, but by the laws of physics. And thosehorizons range from 10^-35 meters, the smallest thing physics allowsus to observe, to 10²⁸ meters the largest thing physics allows usto see – We have reached the end of our rope so to speak when it comes to ourability to observe the universe. Our horizons begin and end at scales spanningthe smallest thing observable to the largest -- roughly 70 orders of magnitude.

Now, if you thought you were beginning to feel your mindwarping under the strain of all those huge numbers, consider this. Not only can we see only 4% of what makes upour universe, many cosmologists, those who spend their lives studying suchthings, think now that our universe is just one slice of bread within aninfinitely large cosmic loaf. This theory is known as the Multi-versetheory. Cosmologists think that theremay be uncountably many, that is infinitely many universes, slices of bread inthe giant infinitely large cosmic loaf.

Rev. Gabi:

Enough already! J

That’s quite a lot to come to terms with, to visualize! Ican relate to the example of the cosmic bread dough, but beyond that I amunable to comprehend the size and sheer number of what you are talking about.But I must say: I am deeply awed by it! It is proof, at least for me, of howgreat God is.

Since the beginnings of time, humans have experienced awe -as well as fear - when confronted with the phenomena of nature. And humans havefelt the need to explain what they could see and observe. Just look at the manycreation myths that you can find in all cultures. They arean attempt to explain how the world was formed, and where humanity came from.Whereas you scientists investigate the cosmos with the tools of empiricism andrationality, and you come up with some answers and many theories, creation myths try to explain humanity’smeaning with symbolic narratives. The beings referred to in the myth -- gods,animals, plants -- are forms of power grasped existentially. However, they are not an attempt to work outa rational explanation of a deity. Explaining God has always been impossible.

And that’ssimilar to what physicists are finding out: they can not explain everything. Let me tell you an anecdote about RichardFeynman, the famous quantum physicist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work in quantum electrodynamics:

He was contemplating the Theoryof Everything one night. As the story goes, Feynman was visited by a “divine revelation” that laid it all out forhim. The next morning, in his Physicsclass at Cal Tech, he excitedly announced his discovery to his class.

“Last evening”, he said, “I stumbled upon the entire generaland comprehensive Theory of Everything.”Feynman then turned toward the classroom’s giant blackboard and selected a chalk from its tray.

A pin drop could have been heard as he raised the chalktoward its clean blank space. “Unfortunately”, he said, returning the chalk to the blackboard’s tray,“I cannot write it down for you, for todo so would detract from its Generality.”

Dr. Feynman got the point across that the moment we attemptto describe reality with symbols orwords, we automatically oversimplify and detract from its native grandeur andinherent complexity.

Dr. Forrest Hall:

In our attempt to describe the universe in mathematicalterms, we see that its grandeur stretches even the limits of mathematics, theruler we use to quantify the smallest to the largest things we can measure, arange extending 70 orders of magnitude.

We have discovered hard limits to what humans can know aboutthe universe and have been able to quantify the physical extent of thoseboundaries. And I am not talking aboutlimitations of our measuring instruments. I am talking about the ultimate limits of what we can actually observeand analyze.

If you look at the emblem that Reverend Gabi has included inyour order of worship, the cosmic Uroboros, you will also find another amazingthing. Not only are we at the center ofour visible universe with galaxies flying away from us in every direction, thescale of our body at about 1 meter or so, is located almost exactly in the centerof the cosmic scale. In other words, we humans after all do occupy a uniqueplace in the universe, the exact center of its observable scales and the exactcenter of its observable horizon.

So where do we go from here? We have seen far, and deep intoreality. Our equations are elegant, profound,powerful. Yet there seems to be no symbol for God in them. If God is anywhere,God must lie beyond our vast sensual horizons, beyond our physics and beyondour science.

Rev. Gabi:

In other words, God can not be measured by science!

But, you see, theologians don’t feel the need to measureGod. They know that God is unbelievably great! True, we can not see, hear,smell, or feel God. And yet we have no doubt that there is something else “outthere:” call it the Transcendent, the Ineffable, the Force, the Ultimate, orGod. We can’t observe it, we can’t measure it, but we can experience it. Ofcourse, there are as many experiences of God as there are human beings -- and,possibly other sentient beings.

Throughout the ages, countless people have experienced theDivine in one form another, and have tried to describe this experience. Itseldom works; or it only works for some of their listeners. And this is wheretheologians and other religious folk are limited: we have no common language to share experiencesof a spiritual nature. We are limited bythe lack of words and symbols that evoke the same image in all listeners orreaders. As the philosopher and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel puts it: “Tobecome aware of God is to part company with words. Nevertheless, we will neversneer at the stars, mock the dawn, or scoff at the totality of being. Sublimegrandeur evokes unhesitating, unflinching awe. Away from the immense,cloistered in our own concepts, we may scorn and revile everything. Butstanding between earth and sky, we are silenced by the sight.”

Dr. Forrest Hall:

So there is that boundary, as Gabi has just said between theknown, the knowable and the unknowable - Rabbi Heschel calls it the ineffable - thatwhich cannot be observed or analyzed. The realm of true mystery. That which in not only not yet known, butthat which we know now is forever unknowable – at least by the tools ofscience.

But the more we learn about the physical universe, the moreof what we know, in my mind, points to the nature of a transcendentintelligence that goes beyond the that which we measure with the tools ofscience, no matter how powerful.

To be sure, we have been amazed by what we have learnedusing those tools. We have learned thatwe are cosmic dust that in 13.75 billion years, was made flesh. A processbeyond our understanding and power of observation breathed life into thatcosmic dust, life able to stare out onto the twinkling necklaces draped overthe night sky and wonder in awe at the great drama, the miraculous process ofcosmic creation, like an illusion or dream, being sustained by laws whosesource we can never know.

Each night, when welook into the sky, or at an ant, or flower, that wonder can be ours.

Rev. Gabi:

But it depends on your level of awareness! As Heschel alsoreminds us “. . . we need to be aware of the tangent of the Beyond at thewhirling wheel of experience.” Because,in our passion for knowledge, our minds prey upon the wealth of an unresistingworld. We quickly lose ourselves in the whirlwind of our knowledge. But, yousee, the horizon of knowledge is lost in the mist produced by fads and phrases.

In order to change this, we have to take notice of what isbeyond our sight. We should not be content with converting realities intoopinions, mysteries into dogma, and ideas into a multitude of words. Let us notbe blinded to the point that what is extraordinary appears to us as a habit,and the dawn becomes a daily routine of nature.

I’d like to conclude with one more quote by Rabbi Heschel:“In the confinement of our study rooms, our knowledge seems to be a pillar oflight. But when we stand at the door which opens out to the infinite, werealize that all concepts are but glittering motes that populate a sunbeam.”

Translations

2011-12-11T14:40:00.000-05:00

Sermon by Rev. Gabrielle Parks

You all know the Golden Rule, right?

In the Christian tradition, it originated in the Gospel of Matthew, who is quoting Jesus in Chapter 7:1

"In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law.”

In Judaism, it is attributed to Rabbi Hillel, who reportedly quipped:

What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow human. This is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary.

It may not surprise you, but I was very astonished when I found out that literally every World Religion has a version of the Golden Rule.

For example, in Buddhism it is found in the Udana-Varga, where it says:

“Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.”
In the Islam’s Sunnah it says:

No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.

And Taoism recommends that you:
Regard your neighbor’s gain as your gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss.

Finally, there is the Wiccan “Rede:”

“Everything you do will come back to you threefold.”

When you listen to these quotes of the Golden Rule, you realize quickly that they all basically mean the same: be nice to your fellow humans. But the way they are written does differ, sometimes significantly. For example, Judaism and Buddhism point out that you shouldn’t do anything negative to others, because then something negative might happen to you; whereas Islam and Taoism point out that it is beneficial for you if you consider your neighbors wishes and desires. The Christian version and the Wiccan Rede are kind of neutral in their focus. So we see that even when religious language is used that differs from our own language use, we can easily “translate” the meaning and understand that we are told how to interact with our fellow human beings.

When I started seminary, the text for my very first class, Ministry for Youth and Young Adults, was called “A Godbearing Life.” I cringed when I read the title, and when I bought the book, I thought to myself, “oh no, I’ll never be able to read a book with this title! And so I postponed opening the book for as long as possible . . . However, there came a point where I had to start reading in order to be able to keep up with the class discussions. So I read the introduction, and it made a lot of sense to me. In the first chapter I still agreed with just about everything the author said about leading a life that is an example for the next generation. I just wished he wouldn’t use the “God word” all the time. Then there were passages were I thought that it really wasn’t Jesus or God who made us do the right thing, it was ourselves. This way of reading was very hard in the beginning, because of my negative reactions to the language. But eventually, it became easier.

I think the first step was to just not let myself be bothered anymore by certain words or terms. Then came the realization that every time I struggled with a text, it forced me to think more deeply about it. When I disagreed, I had to figure out why, whether it was just the language or also the content. When I agreed - despite the language - I had to see what words I would have to replace to make it completely acceptable. So I started to “translate” in my mind as I went along. This also meant that I had to read with much more attention to detail. And every time I had to analyze my own beliefs, my theology.

And it was not only the texts. During class discussions, my fellow students would make statements that made me cringe. But I knew and respected them as individuals, and I’m a UU after all, so I tried hard to find common ground despite the language. So again I “translated” what they were saying in my mind. Throughout the next three years, I had to do this “translating” in almost every class. I looked up the definition of “translation:” In Wikipedia it says that the term translation means to “interpret the meaning of a text in one language or context and the production of a new, equivalent text.” It is a way “meaning-making . . .”

In the course of the last six years, God has come a lot closer to me, to the point that I am now considering myself a theist. But I am still very definitely Unitarian. The Trinity was one of my major “translation issues.” I could – and can – not see Jesus as divine. But I realized that the God I know has three different aspects: the creative force, the wisdom, and the spirit. These three aspects of God are represented many times in the Bible; and looking at God that way has made it easier for me to understand how traditional Christians see God. However, in my world religions class at seminary I learned that the personification of God that gave me such a hard time when reading the Bible is also very prevalent in the Hindu religion: The ten avatars of the Hindu supreme God Vishnu possess both human and divine forms and qualities, although their divinity varies in degree. But again it became clear to me after some study and reflection that those many gods only represent the many aspects of the one God, of Vishnu. I also found a similarity in Pagan rituals, when the four directions are called. Each direction and each element – fire, water, wind and earth - is associated with an aspect of divine force and power. Together they form a whole, in a way, they represent the universe we live in.

But let me go back once more to my “translating” of Christo-centric texts in seminary. I eventually realized that deep down one of my biggest problems was anthropocentric language. Any action ascribed to God by necessity used human terminology. I say ‘by necessity’, because according to Genesis, the first book of the Bible, God created humans in his image. Therefore, God looks like us, right? And acts like us, too . . . God loves, God punishes, God watches over us, God needs, etc. Trying as hard as I might, I could never translate – find alternative words – for these terms that worked for me. It frustrated me no end, until I realized that my personal theology simply did not allow for an anthropomorphic God. I agree with the Greek philosopher Xenophanes who lived in the 5^th century BCE and who said that "the greatest God" resembles humans "neither in form nor in mind." I am glad that I finally managed to translate - in my mind - the texts I needed in seminary.

However, this need to translate a religious text is not limited to Christian scripture, at least not in my case. When I first started learning about Buddhism, there were quite a few words I didn’t understand, and there was terminology that I could not really agree with. For example, I had a hard time understanding the concept of “emptiness.” How can something be good or useful that is nothing, that has nothing in it? How can it be good for a person to be empty? Why would I strive for that? It only started to make sense when a member of my Buddhist group explained that this emptiness is – for example - like the emptiness inside a vase, to be filled with water, or with beautiful flowers. Now I understood it. There is no one English word that translates it correctly, so I am calling it the “to-be-filled-ness.”

I came across the same concept during my chaplaincy at the Hershey Medical center, when my supervisor strongly suggested that we completely “empty” ourselves before we go into a hospital room to talk with a patient. It is not the negative empty we associate with nothingness, it is the “empty” that makes it possible to be filled with the knowledge of another person--which in turn makes it possible to feel compassion for this individual.

I also had a problem with the “Second Noble Truth” of Buddhism which states that all suffering is caused by desire. There’s nothing inherently wrong with desire! Desire drives a lot of our actions, in a good way! Only when desire goes overboard do we run into problems. So the statement of the second Noble Truth became true for me when I replaced/ translated “desire” with “craving,” or excessive, unhealthy desire.

Now why am I telling all this? It is because I want to share with you how I realized in a relatively short time period that it is a shame to reject a text, a statement, a religion because one doesn’t like some of the words that are used. I have found unexpected treasures in Sacred Texts, once I started “translating” some of the problematic terms. And along the way I found my theology as a surprise bonus!

And then I saw many parallels to this epiphany in daily life. Don’t we often hear or read statements we think are crazy, or ridiculous? But sometimes it is a good idea to “translate” what we hear before we react. For example, when your child is mad at you (for whatever reason) and yells at you “I hate you!” Or “I’m going to run away!” If we are wise parents, we know that the translated version would be “At this moment I do not like you very much.” Or: “I want to go away from you so that you will miss me and come and get me back.” If we take the time to translate this in our mind, we will react very differently. If we only hear “I hate you” then we will probably feel angry, or guilty, or rejected. If, on the other hand, we see that this is only an outburst of frustration, we can understand it much better. We can react more calmly and understanding.

Along similar lines, when you hear a teenager say: “Life really sucks, man!” you may wonder what on earth is this young person’s problem? He or she has everything imaginable – loving and caring parents, their own car, laptop, TV and DVD player, etc. It makes you angry to hear such a statement, doesn’t it? But again, when you take time to think, and to translate, what the teen is really saying, namely: “in my view, life sucks” you might be able to approach this statement from a different angle.

I like to use “translation” as a metaphor for the process of understanding others. The translation process, according to my dictionary, can be described as

- decoding the meaning of the source text, and

- re-encoding this meaning in the target language.

Etymologically speaking, trans-lation" is a "carrying across" or "bringing across." So you decode what you hear from your teenager, or from other people, and then “bring it across” into your “language,” that way, you find meaning for yourself and understand the other.

When I first started thinking about this sermon, I of course thought about my mother tongue (German) and the language I live in. After twenty years in America, most of my day-to-day conversation, and all my thoughts, are in English. But sometimes I still have some need for conscious translation. For example, when somebody asks me as a greeting “how are you?”, I still answer. I tell them how I am doing at the moment, and realize too late that the questioner has already moved on. I have to make a conscious effort to translate the question about my well-being into a greeting.

And then there are the many euphemisms that are so popular these days, and that still confuse me sometimes. For example, it took me a while to translate “zero growth” into “stagnation;” and “restroom” into “toilet.” J Yes, this is funny in a way, but I see a potential pathology behind the increased use of euphemisms. Doesn’t it indicate an intentional denial of reality? In a way, we are lying to ourselves, to our peers, to our clients. Maybe using a euphemism is intended to be less offensive, disturbing, or troubling for the listener; but often it is really “doublespeak” which makes it less troublesome for the speaker. t conceals or confuses the truth. Just look at the military’s use of the word “friendly fire” for someone having been attacked or killed by your own troops.

And here is a big difference in the need for translation. It’s different from the desire to understand. With religious language, and in interactions with others, you should translate some terms to find meaning for yourself. With euphemisms, you have to translate the term in order to see the true meaning. And then you can decide whether you agree with it or not.

If people choose to only look at one meaning of a word then they are limiting the richness of our language. It is their loss, and it might say more about them than it does about the speaker of the words.

Perhaps there is a need to overcome our own prejudices and hang-ups regarding words and language. That is work each of us needs to do on our own, and not insist that others, who are not having difficulty with given language, accommodate our individual struggles. We cannot truly be Unitarian Universalists if we believe that only our own beliefs, our own journeys are valid.

I encourage you to be more mindful of your own reactions to certain words. When you have a hard time understanding or accepting some words or phrases, try translating them. Whether it is religious language in sacred texts, or utterances by fellow humans, or euphemisms, do not always take it literally. Look for the meaning, and then see whether you still disagree.

You may be surprised . . .

Spaced Out Theology

2011-07-31T22:19:00.000-04:00

Sermon by Dwayne Eutsey

When I was in second grade, my favorite drink in the world was Tang.

I didn’t like this orange powdered drink because it was good for me or even because I thought it tasted good. In fact, it could be too sweet and grainy or even weak and watery, depending on how I mixed it.

No, the reason I loved Tang so much is that it was what the Apollo astronauts drank. At least that’s what the commercials said, anyway. This was back in the early ‘70s when a lot of kids my age (and quite a few adults) were captivated by astronauts landing on the Moon and driving their cool Moon buggy around the craggy, lunar surface.

Come to think of it, that’s probably the real reason I hounded my poor Grandmother into buying Tang for me: at the time it came with a little toy Moon buggy shrink-wrapped to the side of the jar.

I remember rolling that toy around on the floor of my Grandmother’s living room, drinking a glass of watery Tang, and watching the historic footage of the actual lunar rover bounding across the Moon’s powdery terrain. My Grandmother sat in her chair watching it with me, but she wasn’t as fascinated by mankind’s giant leap into space as I was. In fact, she was unsettled by it.

I remember her saying in her quiet way that human beings leaving the Earth and venturing into space was making God angry. “God doesn’t like us going out there,” Grandma said. “We’re interfering in God’s domain.”

Aside from the picture in my head of God standing out there in space glowering at Earth with His arms crossed as spaceships left the planet, I didn’t know what to make of my Grandmother’s words. I had rarely been to church, so I didn’t understand what “God’s domain” was. Where was it? None of the astronauts on TV mentioned seeing God anywhere and if He was miffed at humankind for invading His cosmic turf, no news reporter had tracked Him down for a comment.

I don’t mean to make fun of my Grandmother’s view, nor do I mean to imply that she’s a fundamentalist. She is actually far from being a Bible-thumper. In thinking about what I wanted to address this morning, though, her concern over the moon missions reflects for me a theological worldview that has helped human beings understand our place and purpose in the universe for as long as people have wondered about such things.

For thousands of years, religions have offered explanations for why we’re here and where we are. These creation myths have helped to “render the universe comprehensible in human terms,” as one theologian puts it. They have settled so deeply into our collective consciousness that many people like my grandmother, who isn’t much of a regular church-goer, have assumed them to be true for a long time.

However, as the poet Wallace Stevens once noted, if something “has been true for a long time, then I doubt if it is true any longer.”

The modern exploration of space, ranging from the Apollo moon missions to the Hubble telescope’s far-reaching glimpses into the vast cosmos, has proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that the old religious cosmologies are no longer valid. But in debunking these antiquated views that once gave us purpose and meaning, has science’s pioneering push into God’s domain left us adrift in a vast and meaningless void?

That’s one giant leap into a galactic-sized question this morning, I know, but I promise to have us all back here on terra firma in time for coffee hour.

As I’ve already mentioned, nearly all world religions have creation myths that attempt to make sense of this mystery of existence we find ourselves in. How did this world get here and for what purpose? Although my Grandmother believes the world is round and orbits the Sun, the myth that answered this question in her understanding comes from a primitive cosmology underlying ancient Jewish and Christian theology.

Basically, this cosmology saw the Earth as a large, stationary flat disc surrounded all around by water. Over the surface of this disc was the large dome of the sky that was a like an overturned bowl keeping the cosmic waters from flooding the disc. God opened floodgates at the top of the dome to allow rain, hail, and snow to fall onto the disc, while the Sun and the Moon and the stars were inside the dome moving from the eastern horizon to the western horizon and around again. Deep beneath the disc’s surface was Sheol, a cavernous place where people went after they died, and beneath Sheol were the pillars of the Earth that supported the disc.

And far above the top of the dome was what they called God’s domain.

This ancient cosmology wasn’t only limited to early Jews and Christians, though. Many ancient people believed in some variation of it. Even Aristotle, who asserted the Earth was spherical, assumed it was at the center of the universe and that the Moon, planets, Sun, and stars revolved around it in space. Like the early Jews and Christians, he also believed that our imperfect material world was apart from the pure spiritual sphere beyond the stars where a “prime mover” oversaw the workings of everything. In other words, this sphere was “God’s Domain.”

Even all these centuries after Copernicus and Galileo displaced the Earth as the center of universe, vestiges of the old Earth-centric view linger. We still say things like “the sun rose in the east this morning,” when we know that the stationary sun did no such thing; Earth did all the moving. Considering how the Church responded to heretics like Galileo for espousing views it deemed “false and contrary to Scripture,” it’s not surprising that such assumptions have become so entrenched.

Even so, physicist and astronomer Sir Isaac Newton attempted to reconcile the revolutionary scientific insights of Copernicus and Galileo with religious belief. Although he accepted that the Sun was at the center of our solar system, Newton was also an unorthodox Christian theologian who was certain that the clockwork nature he observed here on Earth and in the universe proved God’s supreme intelligence and power. Until recently, his classical view of physics has helped to sustain a kind of détente between scientific and religious cosmologies.

That uneasy truce was shaken in the early 20^th century when Einstein’s theory of relativity challenged Newtonian views. But even Einstein was reluctant to discard Newton’s underlying assumption that the universe is ultimately a fixed and unchanging place. This reluctance made Einstein initially leery of the Big Bang theory, which, ironically, had been developed by a Belgian Catholic priest based on Einstein’s calculations. It also contributed to Einstein’s resistance to a new way of understanding how the sub-atomic realm behaves called quantum physics that he had also inadvertently inspired.

Far from the structured universe that was at the heart of most theological and scientific cosmologies, quantum physics has revealed an erratic and irrational reality existing at the most fundamental levels of all matter. I don’t claim to understand this sub-atomic reality, but at least I’m in good company. World-renowned physicist and bongo player Richard Feynman, who helped build the first atomic bomb, once remarked: “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.”

So I’m not going to try explaining the particulars of that strange micro-level of reality where everything is paradoxical and nothing is certain. What interests me today is the disorienting impact that the uncertainty of quantum mechanics is having on our understanding of the universe. Perhaps the quote that captures best this sense of disorientation is author Robert Anton Wilson’s description of the weird reality of sub-atomic particles: Wilson said that based on what we know of the quantum level, a particle can be in three places at the same time without being anywhere at all.

Well, that certainly clears it up, doesn’t it?

Although Einstein’s theories helped to ignite the quantum revolution that led to this mind-bending insight, it was the inherent uncertainty of the quantum level that apparently unsettled him so much. In response to the randomness of the universe revealed by quantum physics, he famously quipped that “God does not play dice with the universe.” But more and more, as Stephen Hawking points out, “All the evidence points to [God] being an inveterate gambler who throws the dice on every possible occasion.”

Until recently, the quirkiness of quantum mechanics was mostly limited to our understanding of the sub-atomic level of reality. According to a recent Scientific American article, however, that’s changing. It’s now becoming the dominant way physicists understand the universe in general. The article points out that as strange as the quantum world is the “general belief [among physicists] is that if a deeper theory ever supersedes quantum physics, it will show the world to be even more counterintuitive than anything we have seen so far.”

So in our quest to “render the universe comprehensible in human terms,” human beings have come a long way, baby. We’ve gone from the primitive, Earth-centric view of a stationary flat disc under the control of an all-powerful God in His heavenly domain, to a de-centered, highly uncertain, and counterintuitive cosmos where we can somehow be in three places at once without being anywhere at all.

As accurate as this new cosmology may be (and, of course, no one is certain that it is), most human beings don’t do very well with uncertainty, especially those of us in the linear-minded West. We are a meaning-making species with an inherent need to understand where we are, how we got here, and where we’re going. We want stories, religious or otherwise, that make sense of all that, even if we have to make them up.

I think that’s why we’re seeing so many people today retreating from the uncertainties of modernity and embracing the absolute certainties of extreme politics and fundamentalist religions. We can scoff all we like at a regressive politician like Michelle Bachmann, someone who wants creationism taught as science in schools (assuming she doesn’t de-fund them all first), but the fact that she hasn’t been laughed off the national stage says a lot about how her views resonate with a segment of our population. It’s probably the same segment of beleaguered people left feeling vulnerable by all the financial and political chaos these days, people who want to be reassured that we inhabit a familiar place where God is in control up there in His domain beyond the clouds.

That reassurance is what a website named “Galileo was Wrong, the Church was Right” promises, anyway. The site asserts “that the Church’s position on the immobility of the Earth is not only scientifically supportable, but it is the most stable model of the universe and the one which best answers all the evidence we see in the cosmos.”

That’s very appealing, isn’t it? Who doesn’t want a “stable model of the universe” that provides us with the certainty that we are at the center of it and have a special, divinely inspired purpose? However comforting and simplistic this Earth-centered view may be, however, as we venture further into the outer reaches of what used to be considered God’s domain, science is revealing just how wrong it is...and the more we learn, the less certain we become of just where we fit into the vast scheme of things.

According to a recent report, the Kepler space telescope “has mapped more than 1,200 planets in one tiny corner of our Milky Way galaxy. Based on that sample, scientists say that there are approximately 50 billion planets in the entire galaxy…including 500 million that are theoretically capable of sustaining life.” And that’s just in our galaxy, which is only one of at least 100 billion galaxies. I won’t even go into the conjecture that our universe may be only one of many universes.

Even when using a cosmic scale that I can comprehend, it’s disconcertingly difficult to fathom how we fit into the universe. Not only are we not the center of it, we’re only a very tiny molecule in it. Consider, for example, that compared to Jupiter, this enormous planet we inhabit is the size of a marble beside a basketball. If that makes you feel small, compared to the Sun, Jupiter is like a golf ball next to a large beach ball, and the Earth is no larger than a tiny pebble.

As huge as our Sun is, however, when compared to Arcturus, one of the brightest stars visible in our night sky, the Sun is like a marble next to one of those large aerobics exercise balls. Jupiter at this level is microscopic and the Earth isn’t even visible. As inexplicable as all that may seem, this mind-blowing scale is easily overwhelmed by the red supergiant star Antares. Our Sun would barely be visible beside Antares; the behemoth Jupiter would be invisible; and the Earth would be smaller than a sub-atomic electron.

As in the excerpt I read this morning from 2001: A Space Odyssey, when I consider how such comparisons demonstrate the bewildering immensity of the cosmos and the incredibly minute place we have in it, I can’t help but wonder along with astronaut David Bowman: “Where in God’s name am I?”

Although Arthur C. Clarke was a religious skeptic, I think he intended for that question to have a double meaning: on one level, after passing through the star gate Bowman literally has no sense of where he is in the universe anymore. On another level, though, his invocation of God’s name also suggests a theological dimension to his dislocation. All the familiar cosmological coordinates that once oriented him are gone taking with them any sense of meaning and purpose they once gave him.

With our traditional social structures wobbling near collapse today, combined with the scientific insights I’ve discussed, we are in a similar state of unfamiliar flux. For some people, this sense of dislocation from a stable model of the universe is depressing. For them, our relative smallness underscores a nihilistic view that we are just a random accident in an indifferent and meaningless cosmos.

For me, though, the farther we venture into the outer reaches of God’s domain, the more we, like David Bowman in 2001, are being called to evolve—if not to evolve physically, then to evolve our collective consciousness from old, outdated ways of understanding ourselves.

Modern space exploration has been nudging us in that direction at least since I drank Tang on my grandmother’s rug watching the Apollo Moon landing on TV. In that phenomenal scientific accomplishment, mythologist Joseph Campbell also found in the photos of Earth taken by astronauts from the Moon a new symbol for uniting humanity. Seeing the Earth from God’s Domain, he said, you “don't see any divisions there of nations or states.” All you see suspended in all that velvety blackness is the one sacred world we all share together.

Similarly, when Carl Sagan saw images of the Earth taken by the Voyager space probe from Saturn, in which the Earth is a pale blue dot, he offered this poignant meditation on our true place in the universe and what it ultimately means:

“The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

“Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us…To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

In the 16 years since Sagan wrote these words, our excursions into the universe have continued to boldly go where no one has gone before, to quote Capt. Kirk. But no matter how far out we go or however fantastic the cosmic discoveries awaiting us out there may be, I believe they will ultimately serve as gateways into an endless final frontier where we are forever striving to discover who we are, and where in God’s name are we.

Meditation (excerpted from 2001: A Space Odyssey):

“The thing’s hollow—it goes on forever—and—oh my God!—it’s full of stars!”

The world around him was strange and wonderful, but there was nothing to fear. He had travelled these millions of miles in search of a mystery; and now, it seemed, the mystery was coming to him.

Where in God’s name am I? Bowman asked himself; and even as he posed the question, he felt certain that he could never know the answer. It seemed that space had been turned inside out…He was moving through a new order of creation, of which few men had ever dreamed. Beyond the realms of sea and land and air and space lay the realms of fire, which he alone had been privileged to glimpse. It was too much to expect that he would also understand.

Closing Words: Mark Twain

…man is himself a microbe, and his globe a blood-corpuscle drifting with its shining brethren of the Milky Way down a vein of the Master and Maker of all things, Whose body, mayhap,--glimpsed partwise from the earth by night, and receding and lost to view in the measureless remotenesses of Space--is what men name the Universe.

The Struggle for Freedom

2011-07-03T15:19:00.002-04:00

Sermon by Paul Sharp

Narrator: The struggle for freedom in America presents a profound paradox. America is a country that was, in the words of Abraham Lincoln “Conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” In fact, our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson, contains these inspiring words. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

And yet it was all a lie, or maybe just wishful thinking. All men were not created equal. Blacks were held as slaves and deprived of their life and dignity. Women were treated as second class citizens without even the right to vote. The American Indians were dispossessed of their lands and driven out onto barren reservations. Those who thought differently, believed differently, or came from a different background were often persecuted and discriminated against. It would take a constant struggle over the entire history of the nation before the promise of America, that of freedom and justice for all, would begin to be fulfilled.

Even today the struggle is far from over. While women and racial minorities have finally gained the right to vote and legal protections against discrimination, the subtle biases and economic disparities remain. In most parts of the country, gays and lesbians lack the basic right to marry the person they love. Immigrants and migrant workers are abused and mistreated, often by the very government agencies that are supposed to protect us.

It has been a long and bitter battle. Unitarians and Universalists were often in the forefront of that struggle. They swelled the ranks of the abolitionists, fought to improve the plight of those in mental hospitals, and started schools for the blind. They supported women’s right to vote, and fought for their equal rights.

During the Civil War, more than 600,000 Americans on both sides died, more than in all the other wars that America has fought combined. Near the end of that war, Abraham Lincoln tried to bind up the wounds of the nation in his Second Inaugural Address.

Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address – Read by Jay Anglada

Four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it—all sought to avert it. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.

One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained.

Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully.

Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.”

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.

Narrator: The emancipation proclamation and the 13^th Amendment freed the blacks from slavery, and the 14^th and 15^th Amendments to the Constitution in theory gave everyone the right to vote. But not of course, if you were a woman. The Suffragette movement began after the Civil War and continued for more than 50 years before the political system finally deigned to accord the right of the ballot in 1920, through the 19^th Amendment. One of the heroes of that struggle was Susan B. Anthony. This is what she had to say in 1873 about Women’s Right to Vote.

Women’s Right to Vote, Susan B. Anthony – Read by Liz Hausburg

The preamble of the Federal Constitution says: “We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people – women as well as men. And it is a downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican government – the ballot.

The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons? And I hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say they are not. Being persons, then, women are citizens; and no state has a right to make any law, or to enforce any old law, that shall abridge their privileges or immunities. Hence, every discrimination against women in the constitutions and laws of the several states is today null and void, precisely as is every one against Negroes.

Narrator: At the end of the 1920’s, America was plunged into a Great Depression. The stock market crashed, and people lost their savings, their homes, their jobs. In his second Inaugural Address, President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to give the nation hope and a way forward.

From the Second Inaugural Address by Franklin Roosevelt – Read by Russ Steffy

I see a great nation, upon a great continent, blessed with a great wealth of natural resources. I see a United States which can demonstrate that, under democratic methods of government, national wealth can be translated into a spreading volume of human comforts hitherto unknown, and the lowest standard of living can be raised far above the level of mere subsistence.

But here is the challenge to our democracy: In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens—a substantial part of its whole population—who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life.

I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day.

I see millions lacking the means to buy the products of farm and factory and by their poverty denying work and productiveness to many other millions.

I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.

But it is not in despair that I paint you that picture. I paint it for you in hope—because the nation, seeing and understanding the injustice in it, proposes to paint it out. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

Narrator: Roosevelt’s vision became the cornerstone of our great economic security programs – Social Security, and later Medicare and Medicaid under Lyndon Johnson.

While the economy recovered during and after World War II, the economic gains were not evenly distributed. After the Civil War white supremacists regained political control of the south and subjected blacks to 100 years of suppression and violence. Jim Crow laws enforced segregation and inequality, and kept blacks from exercising their political rights.

But the winds of change were blowing, and blacks who had fought for their country in World War II were not content to return home to a system of injustice and second class citizenship. This came to a head in the Civil Rights movement, led by the NAACP and by a charismatic young minister named Martin Luther King, Jr. Unitarian Universalists were early supporters of the civil rights movement. James Reeb, a Unitarian Universalist minister was murdered in Selma, Alabama, after he and twenty percent of the denomination’s ministers responded to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s call to march for justice. In 1963, Martin Luther King led a march on Washington, DC, where he delivered his most famous speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

“I Have a Dream.” Martin Luther King. Read by Jay Anglada

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

Narrator: Much has happened since the early days of the Civil Rights movement. Discrimination, while still rampant, is no longer legal. Segregation in schools, restaurants, hotels, and drinking fountains no longer exists. Many blacks took advantage of their newfound opportunities to gain higher education, enter a professional life, and make economic gains. A black man even became President of the United States. But vestiges of the old ways remain. A young black man growing up today has a 16% chance of going to prison, versus 2% for a white male. And the area of open discrimination has shifted, from blacks and women to gays and immigrants. As always, Unitarians were in the forefront of seeking change, openly welcoming bisexual, gay, lesbian and transgender individuals into our congregations, and affirming the right to same sex marriage in 1996. In 1993, the gay and lesbian community led a march on Washington. One of the speakers, Urvashi Vaid, had this to say:

Gay Rights, Urvashi Vaid. Read by Liz Hausburg

With hearts full of love and the abiding faith in justice, we have come to Washington to speak to America. We have come to defend our honor and win our equality. But most of all we have come in peace and with courage to say, “America, this day marks the end from exile of the gay and lesbian people. We are afraid no more. For on this day, with love in our hearts, we have come out across America to build a bridge of understanding, a bridge of progress, a bridge to a land where no one suffers prejudice because of their sexual orientation, their race, their gender, their religion, or their human difference.”

The Christian supremacists are wrong spiritually when they demonize us. They are wrong spiritually, because, if we are the untouchables of America – then we are, as Mahatma Gandhi said, children of God.

When all of us who believe in freedom and diversity see this gathering, we see beauty and power. We call for the end of racism and sexism and bigotry as we know it. For the end of violence and discrimination and homophobia as we know it. For the end of sexism as we know it. We stand for freedom as we have yet to know it, and we will not be denied.

Narrator: Americans seem to be very slow to learn the painful lessons of history. That freedom is never free, that in fact it is one of the few things worth dying for. That freedom is indivisible. One can never be completely free oneself, while denying freedom to others. Both slaves and slave owners were diminished by the injustice of the system, and we had to fight a war to expiate the guilt. Injustice for some, leads to injustice for all. We repeat the mistakes of the past, with a different set of players, and different victims.

But the story is also one of hope. No country in the world has done more to advance the cause of freedom than the United States. We fought and died in two World Wars to protect the freedoms of others. In the words of Winston Churchill, “Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing...after they have exhausted all other possibilities.”

In many of his speeches, Martin Luther King, Jr. uttered the immortal phrase, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” President Barak Obama had those words woven into the rug that sits in the oval office. But what few people realize was that when Martin Luther King uttered those words, he was merely echoing the words uttered in 1853 by Theodore Parker, a Unitarian Minister and abolitionist.

We would like to end with the words of Barack Obama, uttered in the cold of New Hampshire. His words serve as a rallying cry and a beacon of hope for all who strive in the enduring struggle for freedom.

Barack Obama, “Yes We Can,” read by Russ Steffy

We know the battle ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can withstand the power of millions of voices calling for change.

We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics who will only grow louder and more dissonant in the weeks to come. We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope.

But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been
anything false about hope. For when we have faced down impossible odds; when we've been told that we're not ready, or that we shouldn't try, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people.

Yes we can.

It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation.

Yes we can.

It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail
toward freedom through the darkest of nights.

Yes we can.

It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness.

Yes we can.

It was the call of workers who organized; women who reached for the ballot; a President who chose the moon as our new frontier; and a King who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the Promised Land.

Yes we can to justice and equality. Yes we can to opportunity and
prosperity. Yes we can heal this nation. Yes we can repair this
world. Yes we can.

The Hole in the Soul

2011-02-20T13:30:00.000-05:00

By Paul Sharp

The other day I was discussing religion with a group of friends. And I commented that despite the fact that the major religions were created 1,400 to 4,000 years ago, and were written for a very different age and a different mindset, and despite all the advances of science and philosophy, human beings still keep going back to the same old solutions. It was as if there is an innate need for the comfort, security, and meaning that religion provides. “Yes,” one of my friends told me. “It’s the hole in the soul.”

I had never heard it expressed quite that way, but in a sense, that’s exactly what it is. There seems to be a hole in each of us, one that craves meaning and significance. Humans are programmed to fill that hole with something – with anything. But we find it intolerable that a hole should exist in the middle of our being.

A few decades ago, if you had talked to sociologists and psychologists, they would have predicted that the need for religion was rapidly declining, and would soon fade away entirely. Science and rationality were replacing myth and superstition as the way people think. Rather than changing with the times and adapting to modern thinking, religion clung tenaciously to its myths and superstitions, and even disputed the veracity of science. Today, the attitudes of young people are changing away from racial and gender prejudice, homophobia, and xenophobia. And the fastest growing religious affiliation in the United States isn’t evangelicals, Catholics, or even Mormons. It’s “No Established Religion.” And yet religion persists. Why?

It all goes back to the hole in the soul. Human beings need meaning in their life. Science, for all its brilliance, is good at answering, “what,” and “how,” but it seems to draw a blank about “why.” And that’s what we want to know. We may live in a random universe, and there may not be a reason why, but we still want an answer, even if we have to make it up. Which we have, again and again.

In addition to providing answers to the meaning of life, religion also provides a code of morality and a guide for wise living. Much of this consists of lessons we have learned over thousands of years of trial and error (and if history is any guide, mostly error). It also provides a sense of community, which in itself may provide a meaning to life, and a test kitchen in which one can try out those recipes for better living that religion is always offering. After all, how can you love your neighbor as yourself, unless you have neighbors? G.K. Chesterton remarked that when Jesus told us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies, he probably realized that they were often the same people.

A sense of community also allows us to increase the efficiency of individual action. Many people working together can accomplish more than those same people working separately.

Jean Paul Sartre, the French philosopher, described the hole when he said “There is a god-shaped hole is the heart of man,” but that isn’t exactly correct. For some people the hole might be god-shaped, but that wouldn’t explain the spiritual needs of non-theistic believers, such as Buddhists and Taoists, or the continuing spiritual cravings of those who no longer believe in a supernatural, judgmental God who watches us like some celestial Gestapo to determine who is naughty and who is nice. What drives these people to find meaning and fulfillment in life?

And the answer is that the need is innate – it comes from within us. Finding meaning in life makes us happy. We don’t need an external reason, a carrot and stick of promised eternal rewards and punishments. For thousands of years Buddhists and Taoists and non-believers have sought inner peace and fulfillment as its own reward – as their way of filling the hole in the soul.

Nowhere in life is that “hole in the soul” more apparent than at the time of death of a loved one. One minute they are there, conversing with us, breathing, laughing, crying, and then they are gone. The body is still there, but everything that made them who they are simply disappears. Where did they go? What happened to them? Science can tell us everything about the body, about its processes, its functions, but about the ultimate mystery of life, it remains mute. And nature, as you know, hates a vacuum. Into that empty space human nature will pour all sorts of cosmologies, heavens and hells, and tales of resurrection and reincarnation – anything to fill that vast void of unknowing.

Peggy’s mother recently passed away on her 93^rd birthday. Peggy was holding her hand as her ragged breathing eased and she slipped easily into a form of slumber from which she would never awaken. Peggy knew it was coming, she knew it was inevitable, it was even a sought-after release, and yet the event caught Peggy as if by surprise. Rationally, she knew what to expect, but the hole in the soul is an irrational place, a place where reason stands silent in the face of the vast unknown.

During the past few weeks at Emerson Cafe we have been studying the works of Karen Armstrong. In Karen Armstrong’s new book “The Case for God,” she argues that the way people believe today is very different than the way they used to believe. Until the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution, religion would argue that God was a mystery, beyond our comprehension, inaccessible to reason and logic. Belief didn’t mean adherence to a set of dogmas or creeds, but rather a commitment to act in a certain way, to apply the principles of Christianity, even though that understanding was imperfect. It was only with the advent of Greek philosophy, and later the scientific method that rationality and reason entered into the formulation of faith. The church was impressed by the certainty science seemed to confer, and so they tried to use those methods to confer certainty upon religion.

But as the gospel says – “Those that live by the sword, die by the sword.” If the existence and nature of God is provable through reason, it is also susceptible to disproof by that same logic. Unlike religion, science never claims to have absolute truth that will never change over time. It is constantly revising and improving on its understanding, and that is the secret of its success. By infringing on the realm of reason and science, religion made itself vulnerable to disbelief, and the battle between these two mutually exclusive world views continues to this day.

As a result, the early part of the 20^th Century was a period of rapid increase in scientific understanding, and a commensurate decline in religious faith and authority. But this need for meaning cannot be eliminated or avoided; it must be filled with something. As we’ve said before, human nature abhors a vacuum, and it fills the hole with anything it can find. Without God or religion, people turned to all sorts of different pursuits. Materialism, hedonism, alcoholism, communism, nationalism, even fascism and Nazism was used to fill the hole. Only later, after the devastation of the World Wars, did people discover that the thing with which they had filled the hole was worse than the outmoded beliefs they had replaced.

A profound demonstration of this disjunction between faith and reason can be found in the PBS Masterpiece Theatre presentation of “God on Trial.” The play takes place during World War II, in the concentration camp of Auschwitz. The Jewish prisoners know that the next day, half of them will be taken to the gas chambers, to make room for new prisoners. One of the prisoners, out of frustration and bitterness, asserts that it is not they, the Jews, who should be in the concentration camps. It is God himself who should be here. It is he who should be on trial for his life.

“What would be the charge?” one of the prisoners asks.

“Murder, of course,” another prisoner answers. “Look around you.”

“No,” another man joins in. “It is the Germans who are the murderers, not God. God is merely letting it happen.”

A Jewish lawyer in the group becomes intrigued. “If you can’t try God for murder,” he points out, “You could put him on trial for breach of contract. After all, he covenanted with Israel to make them his chosen people, to protect them, and make them a great nation. He surely has violated that agreement.”

And so the inmates of the cellblock convened a rabbinic court, with three judges. One inmate acted as the defense, another as the accuser, the questioner.

The defense argued that perhaps it was the Jews themselves who were in breach of contract, who had failed to heed the commandments of God. Then a young Hassidic Jew from a small village in Poland recounted the day the Germans had come to the village, killed all the old people, and trucked the survivors to the death camps. Yes, he said, the villagers had followed the Torah faithfully, it was their entire life. The innocent children, they too were killed by the German soldiers. How were they in violation of the covenant?

“You know the answer,” the defense replied. “It is the issue of free will. God gave man the freedom to choose Good or Evil, and sometimes man chooses evil. God is not responsible for that evil.”

A young father stood up and told the story of how the Germans had taken his two young sons. The man pleaded with a German officer, ‘please give me back my sons.” The officer walked him to the truck and asked “Are these your sons?”

“Yes, please give me back my sons.”

The German told him “You may choose one of them. Which one will it be?”

The man looked as his fellow prisoners in anguish. “What was I to do? Where was my free will at that moment? Where was the free will of my sons?”

“But it is the Germans who are doing this, not God,” the defense retorted. “God is Good.”

An older man – knowledgeable of the Torah, arose next. “In the days of King Saul, God ordered Saul to go to war against the Amalekites. When they were victorious, God ordered Saul to kill everyone of them – men, women, children, even their cattle and sheep and goats. Not a dog was to be left alive. A war of total annihilation. But Saul disobeyed God, and spared the women and children and brought the cattle to be sacrificed to God. Was God pleased with Saul’s mercy? No, he told Saul that due to his disobedience, God would replace him as King of Israel.”

“God was never good,” the old man continued. “He was merely on our side. And now he’s on someone else’s side. That’s all.”

The three judges deliberated among themselves and found God guilty. And then a remarkable thing happened. One of the inmates asked, “What do we do now?” And one of the judges answered “It’s time to pray.”

“It’s time to pray.” This perhaps is the only resolution for the “Hole in the Soul.” We can condemn our old outmoded conceptions of God, we can even move beyond the need to posit a literal God to explain the mystery of the Universe. And yet the mystery remains. We still exhibit the need for spirituality, for morality, and community. We still seek meaning and significance in our lives, and strive to create meaning even when meaning may not exist. That is what it is to be human. It is hardwired into our psyches, and to deny it is to obviate our very humanity.

As we move past these outmoded systems of belief, we need to replace them with a new belief, and new ways of finding meaning and value in life. One that is compatible with reason and science and the needs of our modern lives.

So here’s the good news. Such a belief system already exists. We call it Unitarian Universalism. And while it isn’t entirely new, because it is an individual creed, one that is forged individually within each human heart, it is written new every day. Because we believe in the freedom of religion – that each individual must work out their own theology – we can tailor those beliefs to exactly fill our own “hole in the soul.” No longer are we forced to hammer square pegs into round holes, or outmoded creeds into a modern sensibility. The meaning with which we fill our personal “hole in the soul” is as individual and as spirit-filled as each of us.

The symbol of that meaning, that spirit, is the flame of the chalice – inspiration that burns bright within the inner being of each and every one of us. Which is why we say, at the conclusion of this and every service, “Carry the flame with you.”

Candlemas, Imbolc, and Groundhog Day

2011-02-06T13:19:00.002-05:00

Sermon by Rev. Gabi Parks

I’d like to start my ruminations about the magic of February 2^nd with a poem by the poet Robert Herrick, who lived from 1591-1674 in England:

Down with the rosemary, and so
Down with the bays and misletoe;
Down with the holly, ivy, all
Wherewith ye dress'd the Christmas hall;
That so the superstitious find
Not one least branch there left behind;
For look! How many leaves there be,
Neglected there, maids, trust to me,
So many goblins you shall see.

This poem is called: "Ceremony upon Candlemas Eve." Candlemas, which Catholics celebrate on Feb 2^nd, is the last festival in the Christian year. The liturgical year, which is markedly different from the calendar year, is dated by reference to Christmas until February 2^nd, subsequent holidays are calculated with reference to Easter. So Candlemas marks the end of the Christmas and Epiphany season.

Its formal name is either the “Festival of the Purification of the Virgin” or the “Presentation of Jesus in the Temple” depending on which rite the Church follows. The date of Candlemas is established by adding 40 days to the date set for the Nativity of Jesus. In the Roman Catholic Church, where Christmas is on December 25^th, Candlemas is on February 2^nd. In the Greek Orthodox Church, where the birth of Jesus is celebrated on Epiphany (January 6^th), Candlemas is on February 14^th. Hm, February 14^th, does that remind you of yet another not-so-holy holiday?

Why 40 days, you might ask? Well, under Mosaic law, a mother who had given birth to a man-child was considered unclean for seven days; moreover, she was to remain for three and thirty days "in the blood of her purification." Candlemas therefore corresponds to the day on which Mary, according to Jewish law, should have attended a ceremony of ritual purification. The gospel of Luke tells the story in Chapter 2, verse 22:

“When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord ²³(as it is written in the law of the Lord, "Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord"), ²⁴and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, "a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons." - So this explains the formal names given to the festival.

Let me digress a little bit, because I saw raised eyebrows when I mentioned that a woman was considered unclean. In today’s enlightened society, this might sound strange, and offensive. It might raise the hackles of feminists. However, in the agrarian society in which Mary lived, life was very hard for a woman. The average life expectancy was 22 years, mostly because to problems in childbirth, and to the hard work they did. However, for the duration a woman was considered “unclean,” she couldn’t do any cooking, or washing; and her husband stayed away from her. So in a way - those seven plus 33 days gave her a much needed break!

Back to our holiday: Candlemas is mostly a celebration of Mary, of her motherhood. Mary, the most unique of all women in the world! But there is another woman, also quite unique, connected with Candlemas. Let me tell you the story of Egeria. She was a nun who was determined to travel to Jerusalem and visit the sights there, and to observe as many religious rituals as she could. So that’s what she did. And she wrote long letters to her beloved fellow nuns at home. What’s so unique about this, you ask? Well – she did all that in the years 381 through 384 AD! Imagine, a single woman, traveling all the way from Northern Germany, across the Alps, and through Italy, crossing the Mediterranean, and finally getting to the Holy Land! She knew no fear!

Let me read to you what she wrote in her tinerarium Peregrinatio ("Pilgrimage Itinerary") about Candlemas: "The fortieth day after the Epiphany is undoubtedly celebrated here with the very highest honour, for on that day there is a procession, in which all take part, in the Anastasis, and all things are done in their order with the greatest joy, just as at Easter. All the priests, and after them the bishop, preach, always taking for their subject that part of the Gospel where Joseph and Mary brought the Lord into the Temple on the fortieth day. And when everything that is customary has been done in order, the sacrament is celebrated, and the dismissal takes place."

Egeria reported that this celebration took place on February 14^th, which proves conclusively that in Jerusalem at that time, Christ's birth was celebrated on January 6, Epiphany.

Late in time though it may be, Candlemas is still the most ancient of all the festivals in honor of the Virgin Mary. The date of the feast in Rome was moved forward to the 2nd of February, since during the late 4th century the Roman feast of Christ's nativity been introduced as December 25th.

Candlemas did become important enough to find its way into the secular calendar. It was the traditional day to remove the cattle from the hay meadows, and from the field that was to be ploughed and sown that spring. References to it are common in later medieval and early Modern literature; Shakespeare's Twelfth Night is recorded as having its first performance on Candlemas Day, 1602. It remains one of the Scottish quarter days, at which debts are paid and law courts are in session. In the Roman Catholic tradition it is the day on which believers bring beeswax candles to their local church to blessed for use in the church or in the home. Also, many churches bless all the candles they plan to use in the coming year.

In the British Isles, good weather at Candlemas is taken to indicate severe winter weather later. It is the time that bears emerge from winter hibernation to inspect the weather; as well as wolves. If they choose to return to their lairs on this day, it is interpreted as meaning severe weather will continue for another forty days at least. And as we all know, in the United States and Canada, Candlemas evolved into Groundhog Day.

You heard me tell the children all about this “holiday.” Not necessarily a precise weather prediction, but it’s fun. And it is a bit of a reminder for us that we are participating in an ancient festival that ties us to the cycle of the seasons, just as it has for people through thousands of years. Our UU Principles and Purposes statement reminds us that one of the sources of our living tradition is: “Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.” Whatever the weather that February may bring to our part of the world, the Groundhog can remind us to poke up from our beds and really notice the seasons and how they change. After all, noticing the world around us is the first part of caring, and caring for our natural world, the “interdependent web of life,” is an important job for us all.

Modern neo-pagans have argued that Candlemas is a Christianization of an ancient pagan festival, Imbolc, which was celebrated in pre-Christian Europe at about the same time of year; this festival marked the mid-way point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox, and was celebrated with lights to hasten the coming of spring. It is the festival of the Goddess Brighid; which was “adopted” – or should I say adapted - by Christian missionaries as “St. Bridget.”

Is it a coincidence that the birthday of Saint Brigid of Kildaire, who is also called the “Mary of the Gaelic People,” is on February 1^st? Saint Brigid is one of the patron saints of Ireland. She lived in the 5^th century and was friends with St. Patrick. She is known for being the only female bishop of the early church, and for founding a church which soon grew into a cathedral. She also founded a school of art that became famous for its illuminations of sacred texts.

As I said before, some Pagans accuse the Roman Catholic Church of super-imposing this saint on the Celtic goddess Brighid. I wouldn’t go that far – I think what happened is that St. Brigit, whose father was a pagan, named his daughter after the goddess he honored. Still, the fact remains that Imbolc, the pagan festival celebrated on February 2^nd, is a time of especially honoring the Goddess Brighid, She is the Gaelic goddess of poetry, healing and smithcraft. She is also associated with holy wells, sacred flames, and healing (just like St. Bridget). The lighting of candles and fires represents the return of warmth and the increasing power of the Sun over the coming months.

Imbolc was, and for many still is, a festival of the hearth and home, and a celebration of the lengthening days, the increasing light, and the early signs of spring. Looking at a lunar calendar, Imbolc is a celebration of the solar midpoint between the winter solstice and spring equinox. On the old agrarian calendars, it is the time of the lactation of ewes, who are soon to give birth to the spring lambs. Celebrations often involved hearth fires, special foods (butter, milk, and bannocks, for example), candles or a bonfire if the weather permits.

In researching this sermon, I came across many stories and legends. One of them describes how on Imbolc people were watching to see if serpents or badgers came from their winter dens. Was that maybe a precursor to Groundhog Day?

Another source tells the story of “Cailleach” (Keilech)— the divine hag of Gaelic tradition — who gathers her firewood for the rest of the winter on Imbolc. Legend has it that if she intends to make the winter last a good while longer, she will make sure the weather on Imbolc is bright and sunny, so she can gather plenty of firewood. Therefore, people are generally relieved if Imbolc is a day of foul weather, as it means the Cailleach is asleep and winter is almost over

So now you’ve heard a lot of stuff that’s going on on February 2^nd. How is it all related – if it is related at all? If you look at it historically, the Celtic pagans were the first to recognize the early days of February as significant milestones of the year. Probably, they based it on the animals around them who got ready to give birth to a new generation; and on the flowers and trees that began to sprout; although it was still winter. As with all mythology, we don’t know for sure when exactly the goddess Brighid made her first appearance, but she was definitely associated with light and lengthening days.

We know much more about the Christian Saint Bridget, she was very real, and did a lot of good work. But was she really born on Feb 2^nd? Who knows? Maybe it was convenient for the church fathers at the time to make a connection between the Pagan goddess and the Christian nun. Maybe it helped people to have an image of a strong woman that helped them to overcome the winter blues.

In the United States of the 21^st century, February is the month with the highest rate of suicides. Obviously the darkness and chill of winter has negative effects on one’s psychological well-being.

And what about Phil the groundhog? Well, I can imagine that this custom has become such a beloved tradition because people are no longer so close to nature, and cannot tell anymore when the long winter will end. Maybe we need a tangible date, a popular ritual, to help us with our winter blues. Because that’s what Groundhog Day is – a ritual. And among all the fun and laughter around Phil, we can take a deep breath and make peace with the seasons, in the knowledge that even if worst comes to worst, we will only have six more weeks of winter.

Right Speech

2011-01-09T13:49:00.000-05:00

Sermon by Rev. Gabi Parks

Language - an amazing gift handed to us by billions of years of evolution. There are somewhere between 3000 and 6000 spoken languages on the planet, and that doesn’t include Fortran, the language, with which some of us tell our computers what we want them to do. There are many purposes for which we use speech. We speak to share words of love and concern. We speak to express anger, or fear, or sadness. But we also use speech to disdain, to manipulate, to deceive.

With language we can heal and inspire. With it we can cut and destroy. You might know the metaphor: “The pen is mightier than the sword”. Apropos metaphor, a friend sent me a few really funny metaphors, used by students in high school English class homework: “Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.” Or how about this one: “The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.” And the third one: “His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.”

Yes, we have sometimes weird ways to arrange words in different ways to communicate both truth and falsehood. Both joy and despair. With them, we have to ability to lighten the spirit. To bring laughter forth even in sad and depressing moments. To communicate information. But, we also have the ability to use those tools to lie, to deceive, to hurt, to cause political upheaval and repression.

With the growth of all the available communication tools, our use of language has been dramatically accelerated. For the first time ever, citizens around the world are participating in uncensored conversations about their collective future. This is a wonderful development, but if we don’t put an emphasis on Right Speech, the cost will be high.

Right speech? What is right speech? Well, for one, it’s a term found in the Buddha’s principal teachings: in the “Noble Eight-Fold Path.” When Buddhism was established, communication was almost exclusively through the spoken word. But, in our culture, Right Speech really means "Right Communication;" and it includes all forms of communication such as television, movies, radio, newspapers, magazines, advertising and, of course, the internet.

The Japanese Zen Buddhist teacher Dogen called it “kind speech” and explained it thus: "‘Kind speech’ means that when you see sentient beings you arouse the mind of compassion and offer words of loving care. It is contrary to cruel or violent speech.... You should be willing to practice it for your entire present life. Kind speech is the basis for reconciling rulers and subduing enemies. ...You should know that kind speech arises from kind mind, and kind mind from the seed of compassionate mind.... kind speech is not just praising the merit of others; it has the power to turn the destiny of the nation."

Right Speech can also be a spiritual practice; actually, it is one of the ten major precepts that Buddhist monks use as guidelines for their daily life. It is defined in more detail as: not to speak falsely; not to slander; and not to praise self while putting others down.

Btw, the Pali word that is translated as slander has the literal meaning of "breaking up fellowship." Causing disharmony in the Sangha – the religious community - is considered one of the most serious offenses in Buddhist monasticism, and it's one of the few offenses for which someone can be expelled from the Sangha.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu, an American Buddhist monk, wrote: “For many of us, right speech is the most difficult of the precepts to honor. Yet practicing right speech is fundamental both to helping us become trustworthy individuals and to helping us gain mastery over the mind. So choose your words - and your motives for speaking - with care.”

In addition to not lying, not slandering and not praising self, Right Speech includes avoiding idle chatter and gossip and not speaking harshly or using abusive speech. Through Right Speech, by not indulging in or listening to such things as lying, back-biting, harsh speech or gossip, we can establish a link between our mental activity and our conduct; or between Right Thought and Right Action, two other aspects of the Eight-Fold Path.

One of the leading Buddhist teachers in America, Jack Kornfield, suggests in his book Seeking the Heart of Wisdom to practice Right Speech by trying to speak from the heart, and by avoiding gossip both negative and positive. He writes: “Avoiding gossip means not talking about people or talking behind their backs, but speaking directly to them. Sometimes this is referred to as “no third party information.”

If you are irritated or have a problem with someone; or even when you have something positive to express, the practice is to speak directly with the person involved, not to talk about it to someone else.”

Right speech, kind speech, is essential for the health of our relationships. For example, there are ways to express your feelings or experiences in such a way that doesn't assign blame or judgment. It is better to avoid saying something like, "you made me angry" or "that makes me angry or sad or depressed or whatever" because that almost always carries the assumption that whatever was done, was done with the intention of making you feel a certain way. Instead you might want to say, "when you do such and such or when such and such happens, I feel hurt or angry" which communicates how you are feeling. This way you can express what you are experiencing without holding others responsible for your state of mind. When we are able to do this, something shifts–there is a kind of independence from our emotional states. They are still there but not so dominating because their source no longer seems like something external or outside our control.

Clearly, the concern of how we communicate with each other is not limited to Buddhists. I found the following commentary on a Jewish web-site: In Talmudic tradition, the opposite of Right Speech is known as "lashon ha-ra", meaning, the "evil tongue." An evil tongue spreads hatred, lies and, most of all, slander. It is a weapon of destruction--with today's media, of mass destruction.

As for Christianity: Jesus gave the same message when he said that it is more important what comes out of person's mouth than what goes into it. In James 1:19-20: “My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, and slow to speak.” And in proverbs 10:18-20 it says: Whoever spreads slander is a fool. When words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise. The tongue of the righteous is choice silver, but the heart of the wicked is of little value.

I also found two suras from the Qu’ran dealing with right speech:

“You shall not accept any information, unless you verify it yourself. I have given you hearing, the eyesight, and the brain and you are responsible for using them. (Sura 17:36)”

“God has sent down to Muhammad this book which contains some verses that are categorical and basic to the book and others ambivalent. But those who are twisted of mind look for verses ambivalent seeking deviation and giving them interpretations of their own but none knows their meaning except God.” (Sura 3:7)

A few weeks ago I was asked to write this sermon on right speech because of concerns over the deterioration of civil speech in this country, especially during the last election campaigns. Right speech, kind speech, civil speech should be free of dogmatic assertions or hypnotic suggestions. But most of our modern advertising as well as the current political propaganda seem to ignore this. What exactly do I mean by propaganda?

I’m referring to information, ideas, or rumors designed to influence the way you think and act. Propaganda may "stretch the truth" or it may not tell you "the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." Political scientist Harold Lasswell puts it this way: "Not bombs nor bread, but words, pictures, songs, parades, and many similar devices are the typical means of making propaganda." According to Lasswell, "propaganda relies on words and symbols to attain its end: the manipulation of collective attitudes."

Propaganda can be as blatant as a swastika, or as subtle as a joke. Its persuasive techniques are regularly applied by politicians, advertisers, journalists, radio personalities, and others who are interested in influencing human behavior. To be fair, propagandistic messages can be used to accomplish positive social ends, as in campaigns to reduce drunk driving, but they are mostly used to win elections and to sell products and services. Every day we are bombarded with one persuasive communication after another. These appeals persuade not through the give-and-take of argument and debate, but through the manipulation of symbols and of our most basic human emotions. For better or worse, ours is an age of propaganda.

You are probably aware of most kinds of persuasive techniques, and I invite you to think of examples as I name them: There are euphemisms – my favorite is “zero growth;” or transference where good feelings, looks, or ideas are transferred to the person for whom the product is intended. Another technique is testimonials. I remember how impressed I was when the Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson became the spokesperson for Weightwatchers™! One of my favorite tools, humor, can also be ab-used, when candidates or the media make fun of the other candidate. Calling Barrack Obama a monkey was probably funny to some people . . .A real sneaky approach is using the plain folks appeal. By using the plain-folks technique, speakers attempt to convince their audience that they, and their ideas, are "of the people." The device is used by advertisers and politicians alike. America's recent presidents have all been millionaires, but they have gone to great lengths to present themselves as ordinary citizens. Bill Clinton ate at McDonald's and confessed a fondness for trashy spy novels. George Bush Sr. hated broccoli, and loved to fish. Ronald Reagan was often photographed chopping wood, and Jimmy Carter presented himself as a humble peanut farmer from Georgia. And I’m sure you all remember how “Joe the Plumber” became a household name two years ago!

Often, propaganda uses fear. Let me read to you an excerpt of a speech: "The streets of our country are in turmoil. The universities are filled with students rebelling and rioting. Communists are seeking to destroy our country. Russia is threatening us with her might, and the Republic is in danger. Yes - danger from within and without. We need law and order! Without it our nation cannot survive." Anybody guess who said that? (Adolf Hitler, 1932)

Of course you are all familiar with the technique of repetition -- the product name or keyword or phrase is repeated several times. Example: got milk, “jihad” or “Axis of Evil.”

And then there are the emotional appeals, when words such as “luxury,” “beautiful,” “paradise,” and “economical” are used to evoke positive feelings in the viewer. Or symbols, like the flag, or the word “patriotism.”
One of the more dangerous techniques of propaganda is the use of faulty logic. As an example, consider the following argument which has been widely propagated on the Internet: Premise 1: Hillary Clinton supports gun-control legislation. Premise 2: All fascist regimes of the twentieth century have passed gun-control legislation. Conclusion: Hillary Clinton is a fascist.

As you can see, people who use propaganda techniques deliberately manipulate and abuse language in order to promote their cause. Neither one of these techniques constitutes Right Speech! They may be free speech, though . . .

The first amendment to the U.S. constitution says: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press . . .”

So – legally speaking, slander, gossip, propaganda, etc, are okay. But when we want to be in relationship with those around us, other rules apply in addition to laws. There is the question of ethics: is it ethical to ab-use language for personal gain or satisfaction? Is it okay to harm others with words?

Let’s look at the early stages of un-kind speech: teasing and bullying among kids. I’ll never forget the case of the 14-year old Kristen, a girl at my daughters’ high school, who set herself on fire because her classmates had been teasing her, again and again. It was a wake-up call for the whole school community, and they started intensive group sessions with all students about bullying and teasing; but it was too late for Kristen.

And you probably remember the school shootings in the past decade, where the perpetrators were victims of teasing; and then only a few months ago there was this series of suicides of young people who were teased because of their sexual orientation.

If we are not intentional about using Right Speech, we can not control how much pain and damage we cause. Notice the focus on intent: this is where the practice of right speech intersects with the training of the mind. Before you speak, you focus on why you want to speak. This helps get you in touch with all the machinations taking place in the “committee of voices” running your mind. If you see any unskillful motives lurking behind the committee's decisions, you veto them. As a result, you become more aware of yourself, more honest with yourself, more firm with yourself. You also save yourself from saying things that you'll later regret.

Another important point: Unkind speech is harmful to your spirit, to your soul if you will. It promotes negative thinking and discontent. Once you put a thought into words, it has so much more power to influence your spiritual health.

Finally, everything I’ve said is true for listening to propaganda, slander, gossip, back-biting, etc. It is important for us to speak up when we read or hear it; whether it’s our children talking to their peers, or candidates running for office; or TV stations mis-representing facts and propagating false information about individuals or groups of people. I urge you to send letters or e-mails to the media if you come across un-kind speech. And speak up when you hear others use it.

Right speech certainly is not easy. But I found some very good guidelines in the Pali Canon, a part of the Buddhist writings, and I will leave you with them:

In the case of words that a wise person knows to be unfactual, untrue, unbeneficial (or: not connected with the goal), unendearing and disagreeable to others, he does not say them.

In the case of words that a wise person knows to be factual, true, unbeneficial, unendearing and disagreeable to others, he does not say them.

In the case of words that a wise person knows to be factual, true, beneficial, but unendearing and disagreeable to others, he has a sense of the proper time for saying them.

In the case of words that a wise person knows to be unfactual, untrue, unbeneficial, but endearing and agreeable to others, he does not say them.

In the case of words that a wise person knows to be factual, true, unbeneficial, but endearing and agreeable to others, he does not say them.

In the case of words that a wise person knows to be factual, true, beneficial, and endearing and agreeable to others, he has a sense of the proper time for saying them.

Why is that? Because the wise person has compassion for living beings.

Buddhism and the Bible

2010-12-12T13:51:00.000-05:00

Sermon by Rev. Gabi Parks

Last week, on Wednesday, observant Buddhists all over the world celebrated Rohatsu, or Bodhi Day. On the eighth day of the twelfth month, Siddharta Gautama is said to have reached the state of Enlightenment. From then on, Siddharta was called “Buddha” - which means “The Enlightened One,” or “The Awakened One.” So “Buddha” is not really a name, but rather a descriptive title. And -- so is the word “Messiah” – which is commonly associated with Jesus Christ - which means “The Anointed One.”

I decided to use the occasion of this Buddhist holiday to “philosophize” a little bit about commonalities and differences between Buddhist and Judeo-Christian beliefs. My initial plan had been to exclusively talk about Buddhism, to explain the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, and then go on to tell you about my take on terms like impermanence, mindfulness, detachment, and so on.

However, as I was mulling over how to discuss the second noble truth, I started seeing parallels to the teachings I grew up with in the Catholic Church. This fascinated me because it came as a surprise; so I give you today a two-religion sermon . . .

Let me start with the major teachings of the Buddha: the Four Noble Truths, and the Noble Eightfold Path, in an interpretation by His Holiness the Dalai Lama:

The First Noble Truth states: Life as we know it ultimately is - or leads to - suffering (dukkha) in one way or another. The Second Noble Truth states: Suffering is caused by cravings or attachments to worldly pleasures of all kinds. The Third Noble Truth says: Suffering ends when craving ends, when one is freed from desire. And the Fourth Noble Truth wraps it up with stating: Reaching this liberated state is achieved by following the Noble Eightfold Path.

This Noble Eightfold Path is a very practical way for structuring your life. It outlines eight ways to be free from suffering and discontent. It is represented in the Buddhist symbol, the Dharma Wheel, as the eight hubs. They are, in a very simplified way: Right view, right understanding, right speech, right action, right vocation, right effort, right awareness, and right contemplation.

We’ll eventually get back to these eight . . . I would almost call them . . . . “principles and purposes.” But first I want to go into more detail about the four noble truths:

The First Noble Truth says: Life is suffering – or: There is suffering in life. Don’t we all know that?! From the moment we are born, when we are pushed into the cold and glaringly bright world outside the womb, we suffer various degrees of discomfort, confusion, and pain. We are hungry but can’t feed ourselves; when we are older, we are hungry but there might be no food; or we are on a diet and mustn’t eat . . . ☺ From diaper rash through the scrapes and bruises of childhood, to the broken bones and cancerous growths of adulthood; to the aches of old age, there are countless pains we suffer. And that’s only the physical part!

In addition to our physical pains, there is the anxiety of separation, the disappointments of expectations, grief, anger, love-sickness, animosity, discrimination - so much emotional pain we have to go through. Yes, the Buddha was right, life is suffering!

The Second Noble Truth states: Suffering is caused by unhealthy desires, by cravings, or attachments to worldly pleasures of all kinds. This is often expressed as a deluded clinging to a certain sense of existence, to selfhood, or to the things or people that we consider the cause of happiness or unhappiness.

In thinking about how I could explain how I understand the concept of unhealthy cravings, I was reminded of my Christian upbringing, and of the concept of vices. Those vices have one thing in common – they are unhealthy desires. Just look at the list and see if you don’t agree:

There’s Pride: the excessive desire, or craving, for acknowledgement of one’s superiority. Envy: the excessive craving for what someone else owns. Wrath: caused by the craving to control everything, to be always right. Avarice: the craving to own more and more. Sloth: the unhealthy desire to be idle all the time. Gluttony: the craving to eat and drink more than the body needs, and finally: Lust: the excessive craving for sexual satisfaction.

See what I mean?

The concept of Virtues and Vices is quite old, and already existed independently of the Christian Church among the Greek philosophers. Of course, vices fit into the early Christian Church’s evolving view towards sin. While all sin--that is, transgressions against divine and natural law--was seen as negative, some sins, because of their severity, soon came to be seen as serious infractions. These became the "deadly" sins (sometimes called "capital" or chief sins), and as the idea of penance evolved, it was these sins which had to be confessed, absolved by a priest, and penance performed if one hoped for salvation.

And here I see an important difference between the teachings of orthodox Christianity and the philosophy of the Buddha: In Buddhism, there is no concept of forgiveness of sins through a clergy person, or by a deity.

You are accountable for all the damage you do if you give in to unhealthy cravings, or if you are too attached to worldly pleasures of all kinds. No confession to another person, no doing of penance will alleviate your guilt. “Salvation” from guilt can only by achieved by acknowledging the impact of your behavior, by compassion with those you have hurt, and by responsibly repairing the damage whenever possible. And of course you have to make a commitment to change the behavior that causes the suffering in the first place! The Buddha tells us how in the Third Noble Truth: Only if you overcome your cravings, desires or attachments will your suffering diminish. If you manage that feat, you will suffer less, and you will be able to be in good relationship with your soul, and with the people around you. It is a constant effort! Actually, the last words of the dying Buddha supposedly were: “work on your own salvation with diligence!”

Accountability to oneself is much harder than going to confession and being forgiven by a priest or pastor, and I can understand and I accept that it is easier for many people to have such a mediator, a spokesperson who can soothe your worries. If your theology includes a wrathful and punishing God, every help you can get is appreciated . . . Asking Jesus or Mary or a Saint to intercede on your behalf can give you peace of mind and make it easier for you to get on with life.

However, there is another difference around the concept of sin between Buddhism and Christianity: According to Christian doctrine, you are born with the burden of the Original Sin, the sin of Adam and Eve. This idea is completely foreign to a Buddhist. You start life with a clean slate, your original nature is pure.

When we discussed this particular difference in my Buddhism Interest Group some years ago, one member challenged it: “What about Karma -- doesn’t that mean that the state you are born in depends on how you behaved in a former incarnation? Wouldn’t that mean that you are born with the weight of sins from a former life? That sounds very much like the Christian concept to me!” Our “guru” – the group leader – explained that indeed, in most Buddhist traditions, the type of rebirth that arises at the end of one life is conditioned by the karmas. Karmas include actions of body, speech and mind of your previous lives; good karmas will yield a happier rebirth, bad karmas will produce one which is less happy. However, it is always the individual – you yourself – who is responsible for the “bad karma” and the resulting rebirth as a cockroach, or a camel; whereas the Bible puts all the blame on Adam and Eve who lived - according to the Hebrew Scriptures - more than 4000 years ago.

By the way, if you take a closer look at Genesis 3:12, you can see that Adam is “passing the buck” to God: when God asked him what had happened, he And then, of course, the woman blames the snake . . . answered, "The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."

But back to the Buddha: I just quoted his dying words – “work on your salvation with diligence!” The big question is: How? Well, the answer is - of course - in the Fourth Noble Truth: you can overcome your cravings and unhealthy attachments by following the Noble Eightfold Path – which is, as I said earlier, a practical way for structuring your life.

Right View, the first one, encourages you to view reality as it is, not as it appears to be. It can also be understood as "right perspective", "right vision" or "right understanding". It is the right way of looking at life, nature and the world as they really are. It is to understand how reality works.

Right view begins with concepts and propositional knowledge; but through the practice of right concentration it gradually becomes transmuted into wisdom.

Understanding of right view will inspire the person to lead a virtuous life in line with right view. Right view reminds me a lot of our seventh principle – about the interdependent web of all existence. You only recognize how interdependent everything is when you look at reality from an unfettered perspective.

Right Intention, the second one, can also be translated as "right thought", "right resolve", "right conception" , "right aspiration" or "the exertion of our own will to change". It means that you should constantly aspire to rid yourself of whatever qualities you know to be wrong and immoral. Correct understanding of right view will help you to discern the differences between right intention and wrong intention. Buddhist monks understand right intention to mean the renunciation of the worldly things and an accordant greater commitment to the spiritual path; good will; and a commitment to non-violence, or harmlessness, towards other living beings.

Number three is Right Speech. It deals with the way in which a Buddhist would best make use of his or her language. In other words, to abstain from lying, from divisive speech, from abusive speech, and from idle chatter. I guess the commandments “Thou shalt not lie,” and – to a degree – “Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain” would be the Judeo-Christian equivalent to this hub on the darma wheel.

Next is Right Action: This can also be translated as "right conduct". It means you should train yourself to be morally upright in your activities, not acting in ways that would be corrupt, or bring harm to yourself or to others. I understand this to be the Buddhist version of the Golden Rule.

The fifth hub of the Dharma wheel is Right Vocation. This means that Buddhists try to not engage in trades or occupations which, either directly or indirectly, result in harm for other living beings. Let me give you a few examples: - trading in all kinds of weapons and instruments for killing, -slave trading, prostitution, or the buying and selling of children or adults; - and any business that deals with meat. This includes breeding animals for slaughter. Other examples include the manufacturing or selling of intoxicating drinks or addictive drugs, and producing or trading in any kind of toxic product designed to kill. Part of this compares to the Biblical commandment “Thou shalt not kill.” I just wish people would obey this commandment more; and I wish there were an addition to the commandment that covered the other abusive trades. Although I do like my pork chops and the occasional beer . . . ☺

Number six on the Noble Eightfold Path is Right Effort. This can also be translated as "right endeavor". It means that you should make a persisting effort to abandon all the wrong and harmful thoughts, words, and deeds. You should instead be persisting in giving rise to what would be good and useful to yourself and others --- in your thoughts, words, and deeds, and without a thought for the difficulty or weariness involved. This last part reminds me strongly of the writings of the Apostle Paul in one of his letters, where he encourages his readers and listeners to do good even if it is hard. He says it is easy to do good to the people you like; it is much harder to be compassionate and helpful when you can’t stand the person. Another example from the Bible would be Jonah, the guy with the whale. He tried to run away from God because he didn’t want to save a people who he saw as his enemies.

The seventh hub of the eightfold path is Right Mindfulness, also translated as "right memory", "right awareness" or "right attention". Buddhists always try to keep their minds alert to phenomena that affect the body and mind. They try to be mindful and deliberate, making sure not to act or speak due to inattention or forgetfulness.

Finally, there is Right Contemplation, or meditation as we commonly call it. It is the practice of concentration. You focus on an object of attention until you reach full concentration and a state of meditative absorption. Traditionally, this practice can be developed through mindfulness of breathing, through visual objects like candles or pictures, or through repetition of words or phrases like a mantra. In some Christian traditions there are prayers that are very repetitive, like the rosary; and there is chanting; the repetitive singing of the same simple lyrics. Another spiritual practice that is very similar to “right contemplation” is the Lectio Divina, were you read a short passage from the scripture and then in silence let it resonate with you.

I could have written a whole sermon on each one of the Noble Truths, and on each part of the Noble Eightfold Path. This was just a very brief introduction. Allow me to close with a short reading by Scott Shaw that explains best what fascinates me so much about the philosophy of Buddhism. I found it in his book “Nirvana in a Nutshell.” He writes:

“The door to liberation is wide open. You cannot see that it is wide open because you think you know how you are supposed to feel and act when you come upon it. Why? Because those who possess the title of “Enlightened” have lied to you. Does an enlightened person claim they are enlightened? If they do, they are not. Since they are not, how can you tell what enlightenment is? Zen is. You are. Stop believing. Start experiencing.”

The Big Blue Book

2010-11-14T20:54:00.002-05:00

Sermon by Rev. Gabi Parks

Annemarie Ernst was a little more than ten years old when her father sent her to the house she had lived in all her life, to retrieve the family bible. The day before, Annemarie and her parents had been forced to leave their house to make room for a Polish family that was moved in by Soviet occupational forces. Poland had received the former German provinces of West Prussia, Poznan, and Upper Silesia under the Treaty of Versailles after World War I.

Annemarie and her parents had been allowed to pack what they could carry, in their hands and on one cart. As they were moving out, the Polish family, themselves displaced from their home, moved in. They were apologetic, and tried to be as friendly as was possible under the circumstances.

In the refugee camp in the nearby town, Annemarie’s father realized the next day that the family bible with all the information of the past generations of the Ernst family had been left behind.

Since Annemarie spoke some Polish, and since she was a child, the father asked her to go back to get it. She walked the 4 or 5 miles to her hometown, and when she got to the house of her childhood, she knocked on the door and asked the Polish lady whether she could go in to get the book. Permission was granted without hesitation.

As Annemarie walked through the familiar hallway, past her own bedroom, past the kitchen, and in to her father’s study, tears were streaming down her face.

She was blinded by those tears when she reached for the big blue book, grabbed it, and ran back outside. She cried most of the way back to the refugee camp.

When she gave the book to her father, he realized to his dismay that what Annemarie had brought back was her mother’s big old cookbook . . . But they couldn’t make her go back again; and she never saw her hometown again in her life.

This is how Annemarie’s nightmare began, and for her, it never quite ended until the day she died.

You probably guessed it: Annemarie was my mother. And we still have the old blue cookbook . . . Actually, it is most likely the only thing that has survived from this time.

Eventually, in Sept of 1939, Hitler declared war against Poland, and WWII started. The nightmare continued for six endless years. From the refugee camp in Breslau, the family moved to Chemnitz in Lower Saxony, where my grandfather tried to rebuild a life for himself and his family.

The war induced scarcity had devastating effects. All three were undernourished, and when my grandmother contracted typhoid fever, she did not have the strength to battle the disease, nor were the necessary medications available. She died at age 43, leaving behind a teenager and a prematurely aged husband.

In the course of the war, Annemarie was forced to flee four more times; she spent countless days in air raid shelters; the young man she had fallen in love with died as a soldier; she was raped by Russian soldiers on two separate occasions; one of those rapes resulted in a pregnancy which forced her to have an abortion at age 17.

After the end of the war, my mother and grandfather ended up in Bavaria, a country very different from their native Silesia. Although both states were German, the culture and especially the dialect couldn’t have been more different. She didn’t have a penny to her name; and no friends. Of the large Ernst clan only a few relatives survived; they helped her get settled in Passau which was to become my hometown.

Annemarie had to find a job, which was not easy because of the large number of refugees streaming into Bavaria, and because she never had a chance to finish her education. She also had to cope with her father, who had become hopelessly bitter, and who only lived in the past, not able to adjust to the new life she was trying to build.

Compared to my mother, my father had been lucky. Yes, he had been a soldier in the Wehrmacht, but he didn’t see too much fighting. He got sent to Finland first, were according to him they had a lot of fun; discovering the Finnish sauna and frolicking in the woods. Then he was transferred to Yugoslavia, where he got wounded in the shoulder by an errant bullet that ricocheted off a wall. After he recovered from this injury, he went back to battle, only to be captured and being a POW for a few months until the war ended. He did not talk about the war unless we specifically asked him; but I never had the impression that this reticence was due to memories too painful to dredge up. Also, he never displayed anything like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

However, his two younger brothers both went MIA. I remember that the year before he died, when we were in Germany for Christmas he was telling me that they had discovered German soldiers living somewhere in the former Soviet Union, and he was hoping that maybe at least one of them was his brother, maybe having amnesia or so. He never found closure, and till his death he talked frequently about Karl-Heinz and Reinhard, and how much he missed them.

Why am I telling you all this? My sister and I grew up with those stories, many of them in detail, some of them only hinted at. We heard them often, and in a way, they were “just stories.” Only when I became a mother, when I moved to another country, when I lost my mother much too early, did I start to realize what a horror my parents had lived through.

As a child, I sometimes resented hearing the same old stories again and again. But now I have come to understand that the reason my mother talked so much about her war experiences was that her losses were so manifold that she had no way to deal with all the grief but to talk about it. Her losses – I can’t even begin to imagine the pain and suffering she went through. But – and that’s why I’m talking about this to you – her losses also directly affected me and my sister, and they are indirectly affecting my daughters and my sister’s son. Because this is what war does!

Thomas Paine once said: “If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.”

But it doesn’t work that way . . . War casualties – that’s not only those who get killed, those who lose their home, those who are raped or tortured. No, the casualties of war go beyond - into the next and the next generation. If there were such a thing as a “loss index,” if one could objectively measure pain and grief, the numbers would be so much higher.

I am also sharing my story with you because here, in this country, very few people have actually experienced war. For 100-plus years, war is something that happens somewhere else. Yes, American parents have lost sons or daughters, wives have lost husbands, and children have lost fathers or mothers; and I do not want to downplay that. But the loss of health, of home, of property, of basic human rights, of dignity, that come with a war on your own soil, have not been experienced here since the end of the 19^th century. Those losses have deep effects on the next generation, and – to use the Buddhist concept of Dependent Causality – they affect all the following generations. Let me give you a few examples:

For both my mother and my father, the war interrupted their education and job training. My mother had been enrolled in a middle school for gifted and talented young people when she had to leave Silesia; my father had been, at age 19, Germany’s youngest department store manager. My mother would have been one of the “modern” young women of the 40s, with a brilliant career at one of the big universities, either Breslau or Berlin. There is no telling where my father could have gone with his uncanny business sense: in his late fifties he finally had a few Deutsch Marks saved to start some moderate investing, and whatever he touched seemed to turn to gold. My mother eventually got a job as a typist, and my father worked as a traveling salesman; both never experienced any job satisfaction.

Along with this loss of a financially secure and successful future came the loss of expectations and hope. It is understandable then that my mother wanted my sister and me to have the academic career she couldn’t have; but both of us failed, and she never got over her disappointment: she lost her expectations not once, but twice.

My father was hoping that at least one of us would have some business sense, but both of us have no clue when it comes to business administration or investments.

The Greek philosopher Pericles stated that “What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.” The disappointment of our parents has been woven into the life of both my sister and me. For decades, we were both suffering from low self-esteem and the belief that we would never amount to much. Only in the last eight years have I overcome this handicap, and my sister is now finally seeing a therapist to work through some of those same issues.

And of course there are effects on the next generation: I had suffered much from the pressure and then the disappointment of my mother, so I did not make any demands on my daughters. Not exactly the right approach either . . .

A less serious – but today the most visible - consequence of the losses that both my parents experienced is our “hoarding.” Because when my parents got married, they literally owned only what they wore and what could be carried in a small suitcase, everything was used and reused until it fell apart. Any item that had potential use was kept. My favorite story here is about the two winter coats my mother made for my sister and me from her father’s old coat. They looked great!

It sounds funny now, but my father cut out the zippers from old leather bags or pants before he threw them away and kept them, and I did the same until about ten years ago. As a child, I never perceived myself as being poor, but this inability to throw away anything potentially useful is clearly a result of the scarcity during my childhood.

Both my daughters are hoarders, too, and my husband has given up long ago to try to change us.

Another casualty of the war that is not captured in the statistics is the health of the survivors; or rather the lack thereof. My mother’s physical and mental health were greatly damaged by the war. The malnourishment during her adolescence had weakened her digestive system; all her adult life she had problems with stomach and colon; and she died of stomach and colon cancer at age 62. The grief and long suffering because of the war was partly responsible, of course, and it made her a bitter and resentful woman. – I only have very few memories of my mother as a happy person. Those few occasions showed me what a delightful woman she could have been.

Like her, my grandfather was bitter and angry. He died when I was only four years old, I had never seen him smile or play with us children. All my other grandparents had died in the war, along with most of my parents’ relatives. I have no aunts or uncles, no cousins, no extended family. The few relatives that made it through the war are scattered all over Germany. My mother found it very hard to make friends in Bavaria, partly because there was a lot of resentment of the locals towards refugees; and partly because the culture and language were so different. And, to be honest, my mother was very class conscious . . . So my parents did not have the relatives or the social support system that could have helped them to settle in better.

And here is another hidden war casualty: the marriage of my parents. You have to understand, when the war was over, about 5 million German soldiers had been killed. Most of them were between the age of 18 and 30. My mother was 22 in 1945, and there were only very few young men for her to chose from. She liked my father, I have no doubt about that; but they were not a good match. They were both from Silesia, and that attracted them to each other. But they were from a different social class, with different educational backgrounds, different hobbies, etc. And of course, the rapes and the abortion made their intimate relationship very strained.

My sister and I were very aware of this, and as adolescents we both vowed never to get married. And we both waited until we were in our thirties to finally “risk it.” A lot of our own marriage problems are directly related to the fact that we did not have a good model for marriage in our parents. But thank God we both have very patient husbands. Still, now it is our kids who struggle with relationships, because they in turn did not have very good models.

Finally, I want to mention the loss of one’s homeland. It is so much more than just the buildings, or the landscape. It’s your roots, your culture. Roots are incredibly important, They give you your identity. When you look at the metaphor of the tree, it is obvious that without roots you can’t grow. And when you are transplanted, your growth is stunted or delayed. In the soil are all the nutrients – in you family there is the wisdom of past generations. Much of this is irreplaceable.

Then there are a few other results of WWII that you might not think about:

Like me, my daughters never had the blessings of a large extended family. The wisdom I just mentioned that is often passed on through grandparents or aunts and uncles, the additional love one gets from one’s family, was not there. Only now, in their generation, is the family starting to grow again.

Allow me to get back to the beginning: the big blue book. As much as my sister and I enjoy checking out recipes from the 1920s and 30s, I would much rather know who my great grandparents were, and many other data from the Ernst family. The way it is for me, our family didn’t come into being until 1953 when my parents got married.

I have always struggled with my identity. I love my homeland of Bavaria. But I was always an outsider there, despite being born there, because I never spoke the dialect the same way the locals did, and my life at home was very different from my peers life in the Bavarian village.

That’s why I fight for the rights of immigrants, illegal or not. That’s why I make all my charitable donations to refugee organizations.

That’s why I wrote this sermon.

In the news from Iraq or Afghanistan, you hear the numbers of American soldiers who got killed. Sometimes, very rarely, you hear conflicting numbers of Iraqi “casualties.” But nobody ever talks about the “casualties,” the losses, of the survivors: the parent-less children, the raped women, the displaced refugees. Those people who 20 and 40 years from now will still feel the effects of the war. Like with many Germans, there will be guilt, or anger, and ongoing grief over the countless losses.

And there are other “casualties” – they are among us now. I’m talking about the many veterans who are coming home from Iraq or Afghanistan with post traumatic stress disorder. There life has been changed forever; and try to imagine how their PTSD affects their spouses, their children, their relationships!

Please, do not forget those victims, and their descendants. Every war has several generations of uncounted, unseen casualties.

War is unbelievably evil.

There is no just war!

At the UUA’s annual general assembly this year, a Statement of Conscience on Creating Peace was formulated and approved. It begins with the following words: “We believe all people share a moral responsibility to create peace. Mindful of both our rich heritage and our past failures to prevent war, and enriched by our present diversity of experience and perspective, we commit ourselves to a radically inclusive and transformative approach to peace. Our commitment to creating peace calls us to the work of peacebuilding, peacemaking, and peacekeeping.”

I invite you to visit the social justice page of UUA web-site to read the full statement. -- As a religious organization, we have to send a message for peace to our political leaders. To prove my point, I will close with a quote by Herman Goering, Nazi Reichsmarshall and Chief of the Airforce. He said on April 18, 1946: “Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

Closing Words

By Dwight D. Eisenhower:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

What Communion Means For UUs

2010-10-18T21:11:00.001-04:00

Homily by Rev. Garbielle Parks

Today we will celebrate our annual Flower Communion, a beloved tradition in most UU congregations. The person who started this ritual was the Czech Unitarian minister Norbert Çapek. However, Çapek deliberately did not call it a “communion.” His idea had been to create a ritual that would take the place of the traditional Christian communion, which he did not like a whole lot. He called his new ceremony a “flower celebration.” Many UU’s have a similar dislike of the communion ritual because it brings back memories of many restrictions and anxieties connected with the sharing of Christ’s body. This ambivalence about communion seems to run parallel to our ambivalence about our Christian roots. What is communion? Most of our Christian neighbors celebrate it every week, some once a month.

Historically speaking, the sharing of bread and wine in a community pre-dates Jesus, and predates Christianity. It has its roots in the Jewish ritual of the Passover Seder: a shared meal, with a historical and spiritual connotation. The readings during the meal retell the shared history of the Jewish people and their relationship with Yahweh. So in one respect, communion is simply an ancient ritual of a shared meal, nothing more and nothing less. As important for many people as Thanksgiving, here in America, or the equivalent – the Christmas Day meal in Germany. But clearly -- communion means companionship in community; people are together and share a meal.

By the way, did you know that the word companion literally means "with bread?" Therefore, to break bread together is a metaphor for friendship!

According to the gospel stories of the New Testament, Jesus participated in such a Passover meal on the day before he was crucified. The gospels also record that Jesus charged his disciples to have a meal together in his memory. Let me read the passage to you, from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 22, verse 19 and 20: "Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me." And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, "This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.”

Based on this account, most Christians regularly celebrate communion; it is in a way a ritualized re-enactment of the last Passover meal that Jesus had with his followers before his death. Jesus broke bread --- and this bread plays an important part in the communion ritual; the degree of importance differs within different Christian religions. In some faith traditions, people believe that the bread becomes the actual body of Christ, in others it is seen as both bread and body at the same time. Yet other denominations believe that the bread remains bread, but serves as a symbol of the connection of all Christians through Jesus Christ

Unitarian and Universalist Churches all used to celebrate communion, and some still do today; the probably most well-known example is Kings Chapel in Boston. How it is interpreted and what it means to the congregants depends on the individual congregation.

Let’s take a closer look at the history of communion among Unitarians and Universalists, because it has parallels with the larger history of Communion in American Protestantism: In early colonial times (the 1600s) the Puritans of New England hesitated to take communion because they felt they were not worthy. They feared that they could go to hell for doing so. One historian reports that while hundreds might belong to a parish by virtue of baptism, “when communion day occurred, a mere handful lingered in the meeting-house to celebrate the Lord’s Supper.” Even today Quakers, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Salvation Army practitioners and probably many others do not practice communion. The earliest Universalists came from a variety of denominational backgrounds. Thus they had a variety of views about communion already in colonial times. In 1790 the Universalists agreed that communion was not mandatory. And if a minister could not officiate at communion as a matter of conscience, and the congregation wanted communion, they should invite a neighboring minister for the day, or have a lay member lead that service. In 1832, over on the Unitarian side of town, the Rev. Ralph Waldo Emerson preached a sermon to explain why he would no longer officiate at communion. He argued that Jesus had never intended for this event to be repeated. What Jesus wanted to be repeated -- according to Emerson -- were the practices of a virtuous life, not the practices of liturgical forms. But Emerson failed to convince the majority of his congregation, and eventually he had to leave the ministry. Through the 1800s, Unitarian and Universalist congregations practiced a variety of communion rites... and in both groups, these practices were controversial – they were adopted by some congregations, and rejected by others. Throughout the centuries, Unitarians and Universalists raised a variety of objections to the practice of communion: It was too orthodox; it was outmoded; it “reeked of cannibalism.” Similarly, the emphasis on self-sacrifice was critiqued as a means by which the powerful control the weak, because in a way it is glorifying “Christ-like” long-suffering. To some, communion embodied all these decidedly human flaws. By the 1940s, the practice had really faded in most Unitarian and Universalist congregations. In 1964, the two denominations had merged, and they created a shared hymnbook with no suggested communion liturgy whatsoever.

In the 1970s a group called the Congregation of Abraxas brought a fresh approach to ritual practices. The Rev. Stephan Papa – who will a guest speaker here in September – was one of the founding members of this group. They created a number of modern liturgies. In the introduction to the chapter on communion, they write: “In communion, for liberals, gratefulness for nature’s bounty is made manifest, to be sure, but it is also a liturgy of consecration to social issues; it is an affirmation of the communion of the common flesh and blood that unites us all.” In 1993, the UU Ministers Association published “The Communion Book” with 66 different rituals -- from comparatively “traditional” services to yarn, rice cake, and maple syrup communion (not all of them together . . .). Most of these rituals have in common three stages: thanksgiving for what we have, telling the story of how the ritual came into being, or telling the story in a way that highlights its meaning; and recommitment to putting the gifts we share to good use.

One of my colleagues wrote: “Rituals are symbols in motion.” I really like that! We need symbols in order to name and deal with similar objects and circumstances. Symbols greatly facilitate communication. Those rituals that adapt, or change, with different circumstances or different people are the most persistent ones. All UU Communions use different symbols of connection: By breaking bread together, we are sharing sustenance; by drinking water that comes from the same pitcher, we take in the element that nourishes all life, symbolically and literally. By bringing and pouring water into a common bowl, we symbolize our coming together after having been apart; by bringing and taking a flower as we do today, we symbolize sharing as a sign of friendship

I believe that that’s what communion means to us UU’s: an expression of our shared life of faith. The act of communion connects us with the beloved community; there is intense immediacy as we sit surrounded by friends; at the same time, we can experience the transcending power of life.

Communion takes you out of your head and into direct awareness of the beloved community around you. And since we UU’s live far too much in our heads, we sure can benefit from rituals that get us onto a different level, into a different way of experiencing our spiritual self.
I’d suggest we do it more often!

Religion, Science, and Our Image of God

2010-10-18T21:08:00.000-04:00

Sermon by Rev. Gabrielle Parks

Let me tell you a story:

It had been a successful summer for her hunter-gatherer group. Skins had been preserved to make clothing and shoes. Enough meat had been preserved and wood gathered to survive a rapidly approaching winter. Fire had been captured from the forest, now smoldering and jealously guarded in their fire pit.

At these European latitudes winter could be brutal, even fatal. Previous winters had ravaged her group. Now her mate, her children and only a few other small families remained to share a cave. Other groups had fared much worse. Most had been obliterated. But climate was steadily improving. The great ice sheets were beginning to rapidly withdraw. Lakes that had been permanently frozen, were now ice free, at least in the summer months.

She sat on a great boulder, under the shade of a towering tree, remembering with wonder and awe the miraculous event that had sat the forest ablaze that summer, provided them the fire that would sustain them through the winter.
On the day the fire had been captured, her group had been gathering blueberries. The sky was alive with the towering white giants who often threw blazing spears of fire toward the ground, in a terrible, deafening roar. Why they did this she could not understand. She thought perhaps the white giants were hunters, like themselves. But on rare occasion when a person had been struck dead by their terrible bolts of blinding light, no one had come to collect the body. Then why? It made no sense to her really. But awesome was their power.

On that day no one had been killed when out of blue a white giant hurled its blazing spear, striking the forest a short distance away, setting a tree ablaze. This miracle, which sometimes took life, would this time give them life through the winter. She reflected on this deep mystery. From when did the awesome white giants arise? They seem to grow out of nowhere. And disappear as rapidly as they had arrived. They cast death and suffering down upon her people. Yet provided life-giving water and fire. And how did they turn trees into fire and smoke? One second leaves and limbs that could be touched and held, the next second fire, deadly to touch, then the next second, disappearing into wisps of grey, like the giants who had cast down the fire! This, and many other things like it were to her truly wondrous, marvelous, unfathomable. And so, one day she gave it and other things like it, a name.
All humans seem to feel the need to name and explain these mysteries. This need is reflected in the many creation stories from all over the world. Let me give you a few examples:
The Judeo-Christian creation story in the Bible tells us, “In the Beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…” And so, the Hebrews had named the unnameable, Yaweh. But it was a name so sacred that it was not to be spoken.

At roughly the same time, the Egyptians created myths to try to explain their place in the cosmos. “In the beginning there was only water, a chaos of churning, bubbling water.” Egyptians named the chaos Nu or Nun. From this chaos the life-giving sun god Atum arose on the first hill of earth- just as the subsiding of the Nile flood causes hills of mud to appear with their promise of life-giving harvest. Atum created the goddess of moisture and Shu, the god of the air. Their daughter, Nut, was the goddess of the sky, and her brother, Geb, who was also her husband, became god of the earth.

Greek and Roman Mythological stories start similarly: Before there was earth or sea or heaven, there existed only chaos: shapeless, unorganized, lifeless matter. There was no sun, no moon, and no air. Elements existed, but they had neither form nor character. Finally a god, a natural higher force, separated earth from heaven, parting the dry land from the waters, and dividing the clear air from the clouds, thus organizing all things into a balanced union.

A creation story from Hinduism starts with a vast dark ocean washed upon the shores of nothingness, licking the edges of night. A giant cobra floated on the waters. Asleep within its endless coils lay the Lord Vishnu. Vishnu awoke. As the dawn began to break, from Vishnu's navel grew a magnificent lotus flower. In the middle of the blossom sat Vishnu's servant, Brahma. Vishnu spoke to his servant: 'It is time to begin.' Then he commanded: 'Create the world.’ Vishnu and the serpent vanished. Brahma remained in the lotus flower, floating and tossing on the sea. Brahma split the lotus flower into three. He stretched one part into the heavens. He made another part into the earth. With the third part of the flower he created the skies.

Australian Aborigines believe that when the earth was new-born, it was plain and without any features or life. Waking time and sleeping time were the same. There were only hollows on the surface of the Earth which, one day, would become waterholes. Around the waterholes were the ingredients of life. Underneath the crust of the earth were the stars and the sky, the sun and the moon, as well as all the forms of life, all sleeping. The tiniest details of life were present yet dormant: the head feathers of a cockatoo, the thump of a kangaroo's tail, the gleam of an insect's wing. A time came when time itself split apart, and sleeping time separated from waking time. This moment was called the Dreamtime. At this moment everything started to burst into life.

In the brief 5000 years or so since pen was first put to tablet, this gift of human curiosity has led to a remarkable understanding of, how we got here and where we are in the scheme of things. It has led us from a very mythic, myopic understanding of an earth created a few thousand years ago, about which the entire cosmos whirled just above on a black vault, and over which humans have dominion, to a picture vastly different.

Through the acquisition of knowledge, supernatural explanations were slowly replaced by natural ones; we went from a world/cosmos that is finite and small to one which is infinite and eternal. The invention of the microscope led to the telescope that had permitted Galileo to resolve what seemed to be bright points of light in the heavens and to see that these bright points had dimension. Galileo saw that Jupiter was not a point of light, but rather was disk-like, and had moons rotating about it, proving that there were exceptions to the exclusively geocentric cosmos of Ptolemy and Aristotle, where every celestial body must rotate about an Earth fixed to the heavens. Peering through his telescope, Galileo also saw that the moon had terrain, much like the Earth. When Galileo pointed it toward the cosmos, and combined this most marvelous sight with his power of human reason, he realized and eventually convinced the world, that the Earth was not the anchor of the entire cosmos, a pivot about which all else revolved, but rather a grain of sand, a mote of insignificant matter among uncountable others. This radical new knowledge about the Earth’s lowly position altered forever our human perspective.

Humans could no longer see themselves as the center of creation. Neither were we God’s sole focus anymore. This was scary! Our feeling of being a significant part of the universe was destroyed. We were as grains of sand, insignificant, lost, in a vast cosmos. This new view of creation gave God a new role: more powerful, more mysterious: In a small, sell-contained universe God’s world was more understandable (he created the world just like humans build houses, he created humans in the same way humans sculpt statues, etc). At the same time God became less explainable and less present in our lives. God became transcendent. And God became less “necessary” because we could now explain a lot of the mysteries of creation.

Following the revelations from Galileo, curious humans turned their attention to what sustained the heavenly motions. In the mid 18th century, an English scientist, Sir Isaac Newton, wondered what caused the heavenly motions described by Copernicus and Kepler and by other men who had been scratching their heads over these questions for centuries. Newton found that he could describe the motions of the planets using a very simple set of laws: Newton’s laws of motion. Instead of angels turning cranks, there now was an even more mysterious force, a force we still do not understand today: Gravity.

In the centuries before Newton, humans used to believe that something or someone had to move everything, including the sun and the stars. The concept of an “animus” required to keep things moving actually dates back to Aristotle.
Now Newton discovered that what caused movement was gravity. This meant that in a way everything is mechanical, and God is not really necessary! There suddenly is less mystery and less imminence; we have the image of the “watchmaker” God who withdraws after creating the watch.
Even so, we could still hold on to the idea that we humans were the center of God’s creation. The ultimate aim of creation. But even that was about to change with Charles Darwin.

The pre-Darwinian view of the creation of life was that it was a predictable, orderly process, governed by a divine plan, with evolution toward a pre-ordained goal with human beings, the pinnacle of creation. Each species was created at almost the same time, within 7 days at least, with each then evolving along parallel lines. On the basis of fossil evidence collected by Darwin on his journeys aboard the HMS Beagle, he replaced this view with a radically new perspective. Creation had begun in the distant past, billions of year ago, with the creation of but one single life form!! Not many. The radical diversity of life we see now, trillions of species, had risen from that single life form! We all shared the same ancestor! Instead of a predictable, orderly process of creation overseen by God, Darwin showed that evolution from this first life form, was instead a chaotic, random process. With branches of life splitting, some branches being wiped off the face of the earth all together, including some human branches. For example the Neanderthals very much like ourselves were driven to extinction somehow. It may have been that our human branch itself hung at one time by a thread, only a few thousand having survived the great ice ages. It appeared then that instead of being shaped by the loving hands of a fatherly figure, that humans were the accident of a long, tortuous, even cruel process; and perhaps an unhappy one at that.

Our image of God became even worse with Darwin: The original image of God as a potter had been replaced during Newton’s time by God as watchmaker who is un-involved, and it is now being replaced by a “randomly designing” God who is even more removed. This seems to be a god who is less hands-on, and has less control; God seems to become even less necessary, except maybe as a catalyst, because everything seemingly happens by random accidents and natural laws.
But did this new theory really detract from the miracle of creation? Darwin himself writes at the end of his “Origin of the Species”, There is a simple grandeur in this view of life with its several powers of growth, reproduction and of sensation, having been originally breathed into matter under a few forms, perhaps into only one, and that whilst this planet has gone cycling onwards according to the fixed laws of gravity, and whilst land and water have gone on replacing each other, that from so simple an origin, through the selection of infinitesimal varieties, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been evolved. Darwin’s discoveries only increased his awe.
Yes, our image of God had become badly shaken by now. But at least the world still made logical sense. Everything had its space. Everything its place and time. “To everything under heaven…,” the writer of Ecclesiastices writes, “…there is a season”.

But even our common sense world was about to be demolished by new discoveries, new revelations as to its real nature. In the classical world of Newton and Galileo, everything in the universe was located in space and time with respect to some absolute place, or reference point. Somewhere in the cosmos, there had to be something that did not move. A place perhaps where God lived. In pre Galilean times, we know that someplace that did not move, was the center of the earth.
In Newton’s time it was believed that there was some kind of transparent fluid, like water or air, in which the earth, moon, sun, planets and stars were immersed. It was this that was fixed, the Emperium Realm. The motionless fluid was even given a name. Aether. In this realm there was space and things moved through that space in time. Time and space were considered to be different, separate things. Space was fixed, immutable, the same today and tomorrow and the day before. Time passed somehow, flowing smoothly like a river, running at the same rate everywhere, on Earth, on the moon, at the furtherest reaches of the cosmos. A clock on Pluto, would run at the same rate as a clock on earth.

But the era of Albert Einstein shattered even those perceptions. Einstein asked: If there is Aether, and it is fixed, motionless, what is it motionless with respect to? Is there really a greater, ethereal power to which all can be referenced? Einstein answered, no.
Einstein showed that there is no fixed frame. That the motion of a body can only be referenced with respect to another body and neither can be considered to be still. You and I cannot settle the argument, who is moving faster, without asking, with respect to what?
In Einstein’s relativity, time becomes simply another dimension of space. Space is not possible without time and vice versa. Space and time become space-time interchangeable with each other. Motion through space steals from time, making clocks run more slowly. Space-time Einstein finds is a fabric in which we are all embedded, and even more strangely, is warped and bent by gravity. When gravity is strong enough, it can warp space and time to the degree that holes are ripped in the fabric of space-time, and things in our universe, suns, stars, entire galaxies can fall into the holes never again to be seen. Finally, Einstein shows that the only absolute in the universe is the speed of light. Nothing can travel faster. He finds therefore that light defines a limit, a boundary between eternity and the temporal. If you could ride on a light beam, time for you would cease all together. You would move beyond the temporal to become part of eternity. Eternity is not an infinite amount of time, as so often presumed theologically. Eternity is the cessation of time altogether.
With Einstein we realized that time was a human, not a divine construct. This significantly changes our image of eternity; we also realized that God exists outside of time, beyond time. And yet, God lives within it. So God becomes an antimony, that is, “two apparently correct and reasonable concepts that do not agree and therefore predict a contradictory and illogical conclusion. The God of relativity seems to be forever removed, and yet imminent.

At the turn of the last century, things became even stranger: In Newton’s universe, what physicists call classical reality, things existed whether there was any one to observe them or not. In this view, the cosmos existed before humans arrived to observe it. Particles, molecules, planets, lions and tigers had a place, a position, a speed and a path.
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, based in quantum physics, describes reality with a deeply mystical model. A model that doesn’t seem to make sense. Why? Because:
In quantum physics, no thing exists until an observer observes it. And until the act of observation is performed, things have no position, no speed, no trajectory, possess no properties, exist only as a potentiality. In quantum physics, the act of observation creates reality itself.

So is it not God who creates reality? We wonder: does God even know the outcome? Quantum physics replaces a material cosmos consisting of trillions and trillions of atoms, each with definite trajectories governed by “Newton’s laws of motion” with a cosmos that can only be described by an ethereal quantum wave function, limiting predictions to probable futures, where any outcome is possible! Instead of a god who reigns over matter, now we have a God who reigns over mystery.

So now we’ve come full circle, back to the deeply mysterious god image of the first woman who wondered. It seems to me that what we thought we knew about God was only a projection of our own experience.

What do you think? Don’t we still create God in our image of the world we know?

Yes, and for me one thing is true: the more that is revealed to me about the universe, the more I am in awe of God.

Ethics

2010-10-17T21:49:00.000-04:00

Sermon by Rev. Gabrielle Parks

Let me tell you a joke I recently heard:

Jack is the proud co-owner of the local dry cleaners. One day, during dinner, his 9-year old son Sam asked, "Dad, what’s ethics?"
Jack thought for a while, put down his spoon, looked at Sam and replied, "Okay, let's suppose someone comes into my shop and gives me his business suit to dry clean. Then suppose I find a $100 bill in his trouser pocket?"
Sam looked expectantly at his father.
"So," Jack said, "to answer your question, Sam, do I tell my partner I found the money? That's ethics".

When I heard that joke, it reminded me of a very similar story, with a slightly different angle:

After drafting a will for an elderly client, the lawyer announced a fee of $100.
The client gave the lawyer a $100 bill.
After the client left, the lawyer saw that the client had in fact paid $200, as two of the client's $100 bills had stuck together.

The following Sunday, the lawyer goes to church and pulls the priest aside after the service. He tells him about the extra $100, and asks: would it be a sin if I didn’t tell my partner about it?

On a more serious note, in Germany, religion class is mandatory for all students in the public school system. If you want to be excused from this class, you have to take an Ethics class instead. Does that mean that ethics is a substitute for religion?

A third tidbit:

One of the member congregations of the UUA, located in Washington, D.C., does not call itself a church, or a congregation, or a fellowship. No, they are called the “Washington Ethical Society.”

So does that mean that religion is the opposite of ethics? Or is ethics the same as religion? Are your ethics part of your theology?

The UU minister Rich Gilbert, author of the “Building Your Own Theology” curricula, says “yes!” As a matter of fact, the third curriculum in the series deals exclusively with questions of ethics.

As I said to the kids earlier: Ethics is basically about doing the right thing. Mark Twain put it that way: Always do right - this will gratify some and astonish the rest.

But what exactly is right? It depends on so many things, and often one has to make a decision between two goods, or two bads. The BYOT class looks at many of those ethical dilemmas from a liberal religious perspective, using a tool called the “Moral Compass.”

I’ll give you a brief overview over the eight points of this compass. The first important aspect of ethical decision making is the question “whom do we call on as our ultimate authority when we have to make an ethical decision?” Is it God? Or can we be good without God? Many people believe that the breakdown of contemporary ethical behaviour is a result of the loss of a transcendent authority. Others believe that Western secular values are ultimately based on Christian ethics. Yet others, like the humanist advocate Lucia K.B. Hall, propose that ethics can not be derived from religious authority or from reason; but is biologically based in empathy. Hall writes: “This ability to feel as another person feels, to be able to put oneself in their emotional situation, even to wince involuntarily when someone bangs their funny bone – this is the link that binds the human race together, that makes us care about how we act towards others.”

Obviously the crucial question is whether there is a universal and absolute ethic, or whether ethical principles are relevant only in a certain time and place. Let me give you an example: You are a Jewish prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp. One day you are escorted to the German army hospital and brought to the bedside of a dying SS soldier. This 21-year old man wants to talk to a Jewish prisoner to confess his terrible sins. Clearly repentant, he begs you to forgive him for having been a part of the Nazi atrocities against the Jews. What would you have done? Are some crimes so atrocious that they cannot be forgiven? Or would forgiveness minimize the atrocity? What is the moral authority for your decision?

Another dimension of moral decision making is motivation. In T.S. Elliot’s play “Murder in the Cathedral,” the English Archbishop Thomas a Becket struggles with the King over authority in worldly and spiritual matters. As the King’s men surround him with murderous intent, he debates not whether to die a martyr’s death, but what his motive should be in dying: will he seek martyrdom for self-aggrandizement, or submit to it out of principle? Though the result is the same, he considers his motive of utmost importance, saying: “The last temptation is the greatest treason; to do the right thing for the wrong reason.” There is a simpler example --- two boy scouts walking down the street, and one of them saying: “I can think of at least half a dozen good deeds we could do if we got paid for them . . .”

Another element in decision making concerns the consequences of behaviour. Pure motivation is no guarantee for ethical behaviour. We are inevitably responsible for the well-being of others. Doing good is a difficult art! After all, our moral universe is an interdependent one. Let me give you an example: Imagine you have a million dollars to donate to a worthy cause. A group of researchers has asked for that sum to help develop an artificial kidney machine which could save the lives of twenty people each year. But you have also been approached by another organization. They say this sum would enable them to buy enough food to save the lives of perhaps a thousand children each year, children who would otherwise starve. What will you do? How can you compare and weigh the alternative results of your actions? How can we assess the value of a human life? Do you agree with the novelist Fjodor Dostoyevsky, who wrote in the “Brothers Karamazov: “Not all are guilty, but all are responsible.”?

Another aspect of ethics is the question of the situation you are in, of the circumstances. Do they make a difference in our moral choices? American singer and songwriter Grace Slick once said: “Things change so fast, you can't use 1971 ethics on someone born in 1971.” And she has a point, doesn’t she? A classic example of a situational dilemma is found in Plato’s “Republic:” Suppose that a friend, when in his right mind, has deposited arms with me; and he asks for them when not in his right mind --- ought I give them back to him? Suppose I promised? Another example: Suppose that a man of high principles and courage has been imprisoned. You see him escaping down the street, and soon afterward you see the prison guards looking for him. You are reasonably certain that if he is caught, he will be tortured. The guards ask you whether you saw him go down the street. What will you say? What is your moral duty in this situation? Why? Do you always have to tell the truth, no matter what?

Here’s another question: Does the end always justify the means? Does your good intention mean you can ignore certain principles? For example: Parents inadvertently find some Marijuana while looking through their teenage son’s dresser drawer. Although they suspected that their son might be using drugs, they are deeply conflicted about using evidence obtained through a breach of privacy. They had always cautioned him against violating another person’s privacy. What should they do? Does parental concern for a child’s welfare override respect for privacy?

In many cases, the question of your good intention influences your relationship with others. In the traditional Western view of ethics, obedience to rules and laws, or adherence to principles, is stressed. Some consider this view too narrow and think that the real focus of morality is the bonding quality of relationship. Let me give you an example: A young woman has been assaulted and gang-raped while jogging in a park. She has become pregnant and desperately wants an abortion. The case has gained notoriety. Pro-life groups are pressuring the hospital to deny her an abortion on the grounds that a life caused by rape is no less a life than one caused by loving intercourse. Civil libertarian and pro-choice groups are equally adamant that a victim of violence must not be punished further. --- To what extend would you consider the relationship between the woman and the fetus? Or, if relationships are key, does a fetus have a relationship with a pregnant woman?

When we make an ethical decision such as defining when life begins, we consider our values. And we think of what’s at stake when we act in a certain way. Our conscience is often merely the internalized values of our society, which generally come from moral laws. One example is in a quote by Albert Schweitzer: “Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.” Consider the situation of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor who promoted peace and non-violence. And yet he thought that the best way out of the “Third Reich” would be to kill Hitler and his cronies.

Another example is the Ten Commandments, handed down from generation to generation. However, simply following tradition is not as easy as it seems. As you know, one of those commandments is “Thou shalt not kill!” A good case study can be found in Jean Paul Sartre’s play called “The Condemned of Altona: “Imagine you are in a concentration camp, and have been chosen as a kind of overseer. You are forced to select some of your fellow prisoners for execution. If you refuse, the prisoners will be executed anyway, but you won’t have the opportunity to determine which ones. If you agree, you can choose those who seem to have little hope of survival and thus make the best of a horrible situation. What will you do? What values are in conflict? Does the fact that your free will has been taken away matter? If so, how does this fact affect your decision?

Finally, a big part of ethical decision-making depends on your character. After all, morality begins when concern for self gives way to concern for others. This leads to the growth of character. Ethics and character are about integrity—the inner sense of right and wrong that enables us to live with the consequences of our deeds. Integrity is knowing that our actions are guided not by convention or external authority, but by the authority of who we are. As Yvelle Younger quipped: “If you have integrity—nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity—nothing else matters.”

Although Socrates noted that the unexamined life is not worth living, it is also true that in the words of psychologist Charles Enright: “the unlived life is not worth examining.” Ethics involve more than listening to lectures or sermons and learning moral principles. It involves engaging this often messy life with character. As novelist Walker Percy wrote in “The Last How-To Handbook,” a person can get all A’s and flunk ordinary living.’

Now we’ve had a brief overview of the so-called Moral Compass in order to reflect on questions of ethical behaviour. We looked at authority, motivation, responsibility, situation, intention, relationships, values, and character. However, no theology or philosophy of life is complete unless it answers the question “So What?” We need to consider the real-life implications of our beliefs, in order to make our religious values tangible. The BYOT Ethics class asks this question “So what?” in every single chapter. And many more questions, such as “How do children develop values?” or “Can one teach morality?” or “Does one learn moral values independently from other knowledge?” or “Does ethical behaviour rest on a religious base?”

If you want to know the answers – well, sign up for the class!

Coming Out

2010-10-17T21:41:00.003-04:00

Sermon by Rev. Gabrielle Parks

Tomorrow, National Coming Out Day will be observed in the U.S. and many other countries. It is a civil awareness day, for coming out of the closet; and for discussion about gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual and transgender (LGBT) issues. It is observed by members of the LGBT communities and their supporters, usually called "allies," on October 11 every year, or October 12 in the United Kingdom. Other countries observing it include Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Croatia, Poland, and the Netherlands.

The day was founded by Dr. Robert Eichberg and Jean O'Leary in 1988, acting on behalf of their organizations, The Experience and National Gay Rights Advocates, respectively. They wanted to commemorate the Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1987, in which 500,000 people marched on Washington, DC, for gay and lesbian equality. Special events on National Coming Out Day are aimed at raising awareness of the LGBT community among the general populace. It is part of the effort to give a familiar face to the LGBT rights movement.

In the United States, the Human Rights Campaign manages the event under the National Coming Out Project, offering resources to LGBT individuals, couples, parents and children, as well as straight friends and relatives, to promote awareness of LGBT families living honest and open lives. Candace Gingrich, who works for the Human Rights Campaign, became the spokesperson for the day in April 1995.

Beyond Coming Out Day, the Human Rights Campaign is in charge of the Coming Out Project which helps LGBT, as well as straight-supportive people live openly and talk about their support for equality at home, at work and in their communities each and every day.

Why am I devoting a whole sermon to coming out, here in a certified “Welcoming Congregation” where just about everyone is supportive of glbt folks?

The main reason is that I want you all to come out as straight supporters!
What do I mean by that? Well, a straight ally is someone who is not gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender; but who personally advocates for GLBT equal rights and fair treatment. Straight allies are some of the most effective and powerful advocates for the GLBT movement. These allies have proven invaluable personally and politically, because their voices often have been heard while those of GLBT people have been ignored. Therefore an openly straight supporter is increasingly important in the fight for GLBT equality.

Coming out as a straight ally may be a challenging experience, but many find that it is unexpectedly rewarding. Some may think that advocating on behalf of GLBT equality is solely the responsibility of those who are affected by the inequality. But as one straight ally puts it: “There were white people fighting for black people’s rights in the civil rights movement. There were men fighting for women’s rights in the feminist movement. I would be greatly ashamed if there were no straight people fighting for gay rights in our movement."

Opinion polls show that people who know someone who is gay or lesbian are more likely to support equal rights for all gay and lesbian people. Anecdotal evidence also suggests that the same is true for people who know someone who is bisexual or transgender. That’s why we UUs are challenged to come out as allies! We worship together with glbt folks, we share coffee and goodies during coffee hour, we form relationships in small groups or RAD (Rainbow Alliance of the Delmarva) events.

Coming out as an ally might not be easy; however, it is much more difficult and often heart-breaking for a glbt individual. I had planned to have some guests here today, who would share their own coming-out stories with you. For various reason this plan didn’t work out. However, while looking for a May Sarton poem, I came across a very interesting web-site. On it almost 100 men and women freely share their experiences, and I’ve brought you some of those stories.

Like GLBT people, straight allies will find that coming out is not a one-time event, but rather a lifelong journey. Coming out is a process that involves deciding if, how, and when to share openly with families of origin, friends, co-workers. It is a “relational process” of being honest with self and with others about sexual identity, or orientation.

The first step of coming out obviously is an internal one, as the individual begins to reckon with his or her issues of identity formation . . . As individuals come out to themselves, they experience the pain--and the power of what it means to self-name and self-identify as lesbian or gay.

Linda, now a therapist, describes it as: “Like a great tornado, I was spun around and around in the dark. Most of what had been clear to me was suddenly swept away. The forces of nature took over. I felt totally out of control. How could I feel so right, and at the same time so totally confused?”

Most individuals do not arrive simultaneously at the point of naming themselves as homosexual, and sharing that information freely with others. Here is what Keisha wrote: “And now at 21 years old, I realized that I had more than 'friendly' feelings towards one of my closest friends, who came out of the closet a week before I did. I now accept the fact that I am a woman who loves other women. I am gay. I am a lesbian and it's okay. One day I'll feel confident enough to say it loud and proud to anyone and everyone; but for now I am happy that I can accept it in my head and in my heart.”

The Closet we have to come out off is a metaphor, a descriptive word that corresponds to the dynamics of hiding a part of our self-identity; or choosing carefully when to be open and “out.” People who are in the closet conceal their sexual identity either from everyone, or from selected audiences such as families of origin or people at work.

The facts about closets are plain: they make good hiding places. But they also isolate us. Children know well the quick cover closets offer in a game of hide-and-seek. Kids also know how vulnerable to discovery they are once ensconced in a closet. Finally, children know well the terror of being trapped or locked in a closet.

Closets range in size, and hence may be more or less suffocating. Some are so small that no whole person can live in them. In such cases the person may have concealed from their conscious selves the truth about their sexual orientation. Others can be truthful with themselves, but are shamed by heterosexism into keeping silent about who they really are. They can crouch in their closets, but have no room for others.

Bethany, a 16-year old teenager, wrote about coming out: “I needed to get that thought out of my head, because I would bring shame to this family and everyone will definitely hate me. I felt like I was a freak and just didn't belong.”

Still others have walk-in-sized closets. They shroud their sexual orientation in a public identity acceptable to our heterosexist world. Only a chosen few—usually other gay people, or trusted friends—know their secret. Here’s the voice of another teen: “My friend Tracy was not too shocked, and she has always supports me with everything I do. I’m glad that she did not drop me. As for my parents, I refuse to tell them. Although I do not live with them anymore, I do not want all ties cut off by them. I fear how they would react to this, and do not wish to find out.”

No matter the size of the closet – those in it live constantly with the threat and fear of discovery. For most gay individuals, closets are all too familiar places. The sizes of their closets vary with the changing circumstances of life. For some, it is dangerous to be open at work, and they remain in the closet in their professional life.

The saddest example I came across was with a fellow student at seminary. Her denomination did not accept openly gay candidates for clergy, so she had to live a lie. Her partner with whom she’d been in a committed relationship for years, was officially her “widowed sister,” and the children they were raising together were included in this depressing charade as nephew and nieces.

Here is my second reason for talking about coming out today: The role of religion in the process. Here are the words of Jerry, 26: “Almost daily, I felt as though there were two great forces in my head which were constantly fighting one another: my homosexuality and my desire to live the type of life to which I believed Christ was calling me. For several years, I had tried to no avail to turn off my homosexual attractions. Therefore, I began instead to try to turn off God in my life. In addition to dropping out of LifeGuard, I stopped attending church, stopped reading the Bible or religious books, stopped praying, and stopped listening to Christian music. This was painful for me because these things had been a large part of my life since childhood.”

Another young man wrote: “Everyday is a test for someone like me. To have to live in the shadows surrounded by animosity and slurs has banished all hope for a brighter tomorrow. The very essence of being is stolen from me and there is nothing I can say or do to prevent it. If God created man in his image then how can I be wrong? If we are taught to love our neighbor, why am I being tortured?”

Another coming-out story mentions how the coming out process led to a loss of faith. Thomas writes: So, I think that most of that doubting about God was really related to my homosexuality. After all, if I convinced myself that God (or at least the Christian God) was not real, then I wouldn't have to worry nearly so much about being gay.

Jerry mentioned dropping out of “LifeGuard.” This is an orthodox Christian movement of gays and lesbians who believe that through prayer and a celibate life they can become straight. LifeGuard and other similar efforts make it even harder for most glbt folks to deal with their homosexuality. Because it is simply not possible to “turn off” one’s sexual orientation. So there’s another failure to add to the already low self-esteem and self-confidence . . .

But the good news is, there are religious organizations that help more than hinder the coming out process. For example there is Catholics for Equality which was founded only this year to support, educate, and mobilize Catholics in the advancement of freedom and equality at the federal, state, and local levels for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered family, parish and community members. Let me read to you what it says on their web-site: “Drawing on the rich tradition of Catholic social justice teachings, grounded in the Gospel message of Love, American Catholics are among the strongest supporters of equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) people of any religious group in the U.S. Yet the official voice of the hierarchy increasingly advocates discrimination and opposes reasonable measures to secure basic freedoms for LGBT Americans. Far too often, the anti-freedom voice of the hierarchy is portrayed as representing the moral values of American Catholics. We believe this trend is a repudiation of Catholic belief in the inherent dignity of every person. It further contradicts the American values of fairness and equality for all citizens under the law enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.”
I can only say “Amen!” to that!

I mentioned that the Human Rights Campaign manages the National Coming Out Campaign. In addition, HRC has a “Religion and Faith Program.” Its mission is to change the conversation about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people and faith. The Religion and Faith program is engaged in this movement at every level. They have created much-needed resources, such as an online weekly preaching and devotional resource called “Out In Scripture,” which tells you that you don’t have to leave your mind, heart and body behind when you encounter the Bible. This Human Rights Campaign resource places comments about the Bible alongside the real life experiences and concerns of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people of faith, and of their allies. They also publish a brochure called “Living Openly in Your Place of Worship,” and a biweekly e-newsletter.

Because of the pioneering efforts of brave religious people who are speaking out for equality, a new movement for change is emerging that embraces a culture of welcome, compassion, and hospitality-- values that are at the heart of all our faith traditions. But there is a lot more to do. A 2005 Harris poll found 90% of gay and lesbian teens say they have been bullied in the last year. In the last four weeks, four of them made national news because they killed themselves as a result of such bullying.

If more of us come out as allies, glbt folks have more friends to go to for help.

If more of us speak up as allies, homophobic individuals will learn that there’s nothing to be afraid of.

If more of us stand up as allies, civil liberties such as equal marriage rights will be the norm, not the exception for our glbt friends.

Put your faith into action and . . . come out as an ally!

The Magic of Winter

2009-12-26T14:00:00.002-05:00

Sermon by Dwayne Eutsey

I’m not a big fan of winter. In fact, I can be downright Scrooge-like when it comes to this time of year.

What little there may be to like about winter is lost to me among my sore back from shoveling an endless layer of snow; driving on dangerously icy roads with the tires of other vehicles spitting and splattering that brown salty glop all over my car; paying those crushingly high heating bills; suffering through colds and flues, numb fingers and toes, and the never-ending sniffly, snotty noses.

With all that going on, is it any wonder I cringe when I hear those sappy songs about winter that we hear around this time? Songs like:

When it snows, ain't it thrilling,
Though your nose gets a chilling
We'll frolic and play, the Eskimo way,
Walking in a winter wonderland.

Especially when I remember digging out after last week’s big snow storm, all I can say to that winterist propaganda is: Bah humbug!

If cultural references to the season are any indication, I’m not alone in my Scroogey feelings about winter’s bleakness. Shakespeare, after all, coined the phrase “this is the winter of our discontent.” C.S. Lewis describes the dreary climate of his fantasy world in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as being “always winter but never Christmas.”

Emily Dickenson, in her poetically cryptic way, wrote

There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons —
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes —

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us —
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are —

None may teach it — Any —
’Tis the Seal Despair —
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air —

When it comes, the Landscape listens —
Shadows — hold their breath —
When it goes, ’tis like the Distance
On the look of Death —

In his poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” the appropriately named Robert Frost also equates a wintry evening with death.

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Although that doesn’t sound so grim, literary critics like Jeffrey Meyers assert that Frost’s theme here is “the temptation of death, even suicide, symbolized by the woods that are filling up with snow on the darkest evening of the year.” Meyers goes on to muse that “the speaker is powerfully drawn to these woods…and wants to lie down and let the snow cover and bury him.”

I wouldn’t go that far in my feelings about winter, but I have to admit that on dark, chilly mornings I want to remain buried under the blankets and hibernate until April. For people who have seasonal affective disorder, of course, such a mood is more intense during the cold winter months. Aside from the medical reasons for this, there also seems to be a mythic dimension to Seasonal Affective Disorder.

According to an ancient Greek myth, the lord of the underworld, Hades, wanted the goddess of the harvest, Persephone, to be his wife. This being in the days before eHarmony, which might have given Hades an easier way of finding a mate, he decided to kidnap the goddess. When Zeus, Persephone’s father, heard about this, he ordered Hades to return Persephone to her mother Demeter, the goddess of the Earth. Before Persephone left the underworld, however, Hades tricked her into eating the food of the dead, which meant she could not leave the underworld. Demeter cried foul but Hades insisted that rules were rules.

As king of the gods, Zeus had the final word on the matter and decreed that every year Persephone would spend six months with Demeter in the land of the living. After her harvest responsibilities were over, Persephone would then spend the next six months with Hades in the underworld. Whenever she went to be with Hades, her mother became so morose that her mood caused winter to envelope the world until Persophone returned from the underworld.

So, especially in many cultures of the northern hemisphere, winter is often associated in our collective imagination with barrenness, depression, and even death. As we know from our Fellowship’s involvement in the Talbot Interfaith Shelter, there is also the all-too-real plight of homeless men, women, and children right here in our community struggling to survive in this so-called winter wonderland.

You might be wondering, then, why the focus of today’s sermon is on the magic of winter. What is so enchanting about this season if it’s as dreary as I’ve outlined here? There are probably many answers to that question (some of which you can share during the multilogue today), but the most basic answer I can think of can be summed up in a single word.

Hope.

Hope that in the dead of winter, there is still the possibility of new life. Hope that an enduring light shines on in the wintry darkness. Hope that in the frigid isolation of the season, the warmth of a community like what we have here today remains.

As Mary Oliver reflects in Winter Hours:
In the winter I am writing about, there was much darkness. Darkness of nature, darkness of event, darkness of the spirit. The sprawling darkness of not knowing. We speak of the light of reason. I would speak here of the darkness of the world, and the light of ________. But I don’t know what to call it. Maybe hope. Maybe faith, but not a shaped faith–only, say, a gesture, or a continuum of gestures. But probably it is closer to hope, that is more active, and far messier than faith must be. Faith, as I imagine it, is tensile, and cool, and has no need of words. Hope, I know, is a fighter and a screamer…

I believe such determined hope is a universal human trait, one that underlies most religious traditions celebrated during this time. Interestingly, this winter hope is often infused with magical thinking especially among nature- based traditions. Pagans in Scandinavia, for example, burned the Yule log on the winter solstice in the hope that it would help engender the rebirth of the sun.

They gathered around large bonfires, drank mead, and listened to minstrel-poets sing ancient legends. Beyond the social need of gathering together in community, ancient Scandinavians believed that burning the Yule log had the magical ability to make the sun shine more brightly (I imagine the mead consumption may have contributed to this belief as well).

Similarly in ancient Rome on the winter solstice, Pagans feasted in honor of Natalis Solis Invicti, the “Birthday of the Unconquered Sun.” As with many Pagans of that era, Romans feared the sun was dying at the end of the year as the days grew shorter and shorter. On December 25, as sunlight seemed to last just a little longer at the end of the day, Romans held a solemn feast they hoped would encourage the continued rebirth of the sun, as represented for them by the sun-god Mithras.

Not surprisingly, early Christians found many parallels between the birth of their Son of God, Jesus, and the rebirth of the popular sun-god Mithras, which is one of the reasons the church co-opted December 25th as the birthday of Jesus. According to Christian theology, after all, Jesus is God’s “unconquered son” (s-o-n), who was born as a divine light shining in a darkened world. While the darkness tried to overcome the light, the light nonetheless prevailed.

Most Christians probably wouldn’t consider their mythic hope in this divine light magical, but how else do you characterize the supernatural power behind the virgin birth? What is magical if not the appearance of singing angels in the night sky and luminous stars that guide shepherds and wise men to the enduring hope of new life born in the form of a fragile human infant?
And it was all revealed, according to the nativity myth, in the dead of winter.

As a student of religion and the deep truths contained within myth, when I contemplate these magical ways of understanding winter, I can actually begin to feel my icy Scrooge-like grudge against the season thaw a little. But Scandinavian Pagans gathered around a burning Yule log and drinking mead, or Romans celebrating the rebirth of Mithras, or even Christians reliving the nativity story all seem far removed from my every day experience.

Intellectually, I can appreciate the magical hope nurtured by these rituals, and can even yearn to experience it myself during the winter doldrums, but it’s often just not there in an authentic way for me.

Or is it? Maybe like Scrooge, I’ve allowed myself to become so consumed by the dark and dreary aspects of this season that I have forgotten or overlook the magical light of the season that’s shining all around me. I don’t anticipate any winter ghosts paying me a visit anytime soon to point this out (not without copious amounts of mead consumption, anyway). So, in the spirit of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, which was influenced by Unitarianism, I’ve taken it upon myself to reflect on events in my past, present, and maybe even future that exemplify the magical hope of winter that I’ve been discussing.

Following the spirit of Winter Past, I was taken back to my earliest winter memory at my grandmother’s house in Aberdeen, Maryland. I must have been four years old and recall sitting on the hardwood floor beside the Christmas tree in her living room. All the lights in the house were turned off except for the line of colorful lights strung around the tree, glowing through the silver tinsel and trim. I remember it feeling very magical at the time.

I loved to look at my distorted reflection in the fragile red and blue bulbs hanging from the Christmas tree branches like strange moons over the tiny toy village arranged on the floor below. I wondered what it would be like to become so tiny that I could go inside those little white cardboard houses sitting on the layer of snowy cotton. I also remember stepping behind the large curtain drawn across the picture window in the living room. For one magical moment, I gazed out at the stillness of freshly fallen, untouched snow glittering blue and white beneath streetlights shining in the wintry night.

Years later, when we lived in Dorchester County, I’d spend cold January afternoons playing in the barren woods behind my friend’s house. Trudging alone up the long country lane leading to home late in the day, I’d look at the sun setting on an orange horizon as everywhere else turned an icy violet hue. My legs numb, my nose sniffling, I remember that familiar feeling of entering the warm, well-lit kitchen where my mom was making dinner. Peeling off the snow- crusted hat and gloves and boots and savoring the aroma of whatever was bubbling on the stove, I had that magical sense of being where I belonged, safe and sheltered from the cold darkness gathering outside.

The spirit of Winter Present reminds me that as much as I may grumble about this time of year, there is something about winter’s austere beauty that I find hopeful, even magical. Even when I’m feeling the ache in my back as I shovel snow, I love to stop a moment and listen to that silence that only comes with a hefty layer of snow covering the ground. I gaze around and see dark, leafless trees reaching toward a gray sky as a large bird circles overhead with wings outstretched.

In a moment like this I’m reminded that life goes on even in the bleakest moments. I’m reminded that especially in the dead of winter, we yearn and search for joy, warmth, and community, just like that bird in the cold sky searches for life-sustaining food on the snowy ground below.

“Look at the birds of the air,” Jesus teaches us. “They do not sow or reap or store away in barns.” Yet, the creative power underlying all life feeds them. As strands in the interconnected web of life, we’re no different than these birds in our dependence on nature, but it’s easy to lose sight of that until winter’s scarcity reminds us of the magical interconnection we share with the land and other species.

With global climate change and the deadly erratic extremes of nature these days, the spirit of Winter Future casts some concern over this reassuring feeling that nature takes care of us. According to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, Earth’s average temperature rose 1 degree F over the past century and is projected to rise another 3 to 10 degrees F in the next 100 years.

If temperatures continue to rise like this, future generations will only be able to dream of a white Christmas because such a phenomenon will have become a thing of the past. Or perhaps winter will become even harsher and more life- threatening. Researchers believe we can probably expect more extreme wet and dry conditions in the years to come. Coastal areas like the Eastern Shore may become more vulnerable to storm surges as the sea level rises.

Let’s hope we’ll realize that, to paraphrase Scrooge, if our current “courses be departed from, these dire climate predictions will change.” Even if we manage to avoid catastrophic climate events, however, the remission of life during winter will probably always remain associated in our imaginations with death, as I pointed out earlier.

The spirit of Winter Future, however, has also shown me that even this grim association can be hopeful. It even has the possibility of magic when we realize that winter, like our mortality, is simply a natural part of the rhythm of life. I’m not the first to point out that our lives have a seasonal pattern to them: the spring of our youth, the summer of our adulthood, the autumn of our midlife, the winter of old age. Winter, despite seeming to last forever, will eventually end and so will we. But winter also eventually melts away into the refulgent mystery of spring’s new life. Perhaps we have something unconquerable within whatever it is we are that will also experience a renewal of some sort. Perhaps.

I don’t know that the visit of these three spirits of winter have made me love this time of year any more than I did before. It’s tempting, in fact, for me to numb out to the season in the way Wallace Stevens wrote in his poem “The Snow Man”:

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

With all due respect to Mr. Stevens, after reflecting on winter for this sermon I’m actually more inspired to behold and cherish the something that, like the unconquerable sun, endures even as we’re enveloped by the season’s cold and dark.

While I may still grumble “bah humbug” during this time of year, the magical spirit of winter now also leaves me more inclined to recognize the gifts that the season brings as well and to express a grateful “amen” for them and the undying light that shines all around and within us even during the longest wintry night.

The Soul of Public Health

2009-11-30T08:53:00.000-05:00

Sermon presented to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship at Easton
By Janet Pfeffer, jpfeffer@goeaston.net.

It’s 1954. My third grade class is lined up against the wall outside the cafeteria waiting its turn, along with other first and second and third graders at Public School 165 in Queens, NY. We are doing this—those of us whose parents gave permission—three times in the space of five weeks. I see a huge instrument in the nurse’s hands, at least 12 inches long, with a giant plunger and a long, thick needle. I receive the injection in my arm and choose a red lollipop. Someone handles my information card, recording the details that will be hand-punched onto data cards for the researchers. I am given a small white pin that I keep for decades. It says, “I am a polio pioneer.”

Church bells ring in cities around the US on April 12, 1955, , at news of the success of the polio vaccine clinical trials. It happens to be the tenth anniversary of FDR’s death. My family receives letters stating that both my sister and I have received the Salk vaccine, not the placebo. Mother stops having nightmares about iron lungs.
Twenty-five years later I am wishing for my polio pioneer pin. My young classmates at the UCLA School of Public Health are unimpressed that I was a foot soldier in the army of almost two million little North American children who took part in the polio vaccine crusade. A spark ignites in my breast, right about where that pin belongs. I am a public health icon, and I have found my calling.
You think I’m here to talk about the Soul of PH because of health care reform and H1N1. Nope. I am here because of the sermons that Paul Sharp and Rev. Gabi delivered late this summer. You could say I was inadvertently Pfeffered.
On August 23rd Paul talked about how religions have three parts: a theological or spiritual component, morality, and community. And then Rev. Gabi talked about the spiritual aspect of social justice work in her Labor Day sermon. She referenced our principles that relate to ensuring all workers have safe, humane, healthy conditions and opportunities for self respect and self sufficiency. Paul and Rev. Gabi helped me see why PH is my religion – one of them, anyway. Our UU principles resonate with those of the WHO as “basic to the happiness, harmonious relations and security of all peoples.”
I want to talk about history and heroics.
Jonas Salk was born in NYC in 1914 of Russian-Jewish immigrants who pushed their sons to excell. You know the scientific and religious controversy over when, exactly, life begins? The Jewish tradition is clear: The fetus is not considered viable until after it graduates from medical school.
Salk became absorbed in research at Med school, focusing on biochemistry and bacteriology; he said he wanted to help humankind in general rather than single patients. In 1947, Salk went to the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine where he worked 16 hours a day, seven days a week, for eight years to develop a vaccine against polio.
Polio was a baffling medical oddity, first recorded in 1835. Epidemics kept getting worse and its victims were usually children. In 1938 when the March of Dimes fundraising program started and radio listeners were asked to send in a dime, the White House received 2,680,000 letters within days. By 1952 polio was killing more children than any other communicable disease.
Jonas Salk used the killed virus, safer than the live one. When it was time, in 1953, for the vaccine to be tested on humans, Salk said that he would be “personally responsible” and that his wife and three sons would be among the first volunteers to be inoculated. He refused to patent the successful vaccine, because he wanted to see it disseminated as widely as possible.. Between 1955 - 57, the incidence of polio in the U.S. fell by 85 - 90%.
Polio is a public health story because it deals with preventing disease and promoting health on the community level. PH studies the causes, distribution and control of disease in populations. It’s an old discipline. The Romans knew about diverting human waste in urban areas, and the Chinese provided some measure of immunity after a smallpox epidemic around 1000 BC by having people inhale the dried crusts of smallpox lesions of infected persons.
In the 1800s, the Industrial Revolution involved immigration and the shift of population to cities in Europe, leading to overcrowding and inadequate or nonexistent public water and waste disposal. There were outbreaks of cholera, dysentery, TB, typhoid fever, flu, yellow fever, and malaria.

An English physician, John Snow, founded the science of Epidemiology, when he used a spot map and statistics to show how a polluted public water well was the source of an 1854 cholera outbreak in London. The 1500 members of the John Snow Society have an Annual Pumphandle Lecture Series to celebrate this PH milestone.
Louis Pasteur ushered in the modern era of public health in the 1880s with the germ theory and the production of artificial vaccines. Pasteur realized that microorganisms not only cause beverages to spoil, they cause disease by infecting animals and humans. He inspired Joseph Lister to develop antiseptic methods in surgery.[9]
Later, when Pasteur was working on chicken cholera. a culture of the cholera bacteria had spoiled and failed to sicken some chickens he was trying to infect. He couldn’t infect them, even with fresh bacteria; he realized that the weakened bacteria had caused the chickens to become immune to the disease. This discovery revolutionized work in infectious diseases.
Apparently, Pasteur was fearless in his zeal. You know that Pasteur created the rabies vaccine. His assistant said, “ I once saw him with the glass tube, held between his lips, draw a few drops of the deadly saliva from the mouth of a rabid bull-dog, held on the table by two assistants, their hands protected by leather gloves.”
By 1900 40 of the 45 states in the US had health departments. The leading causes of death were pneumonia, tuberculosis, diarrhea and enteritis. Along with diphtheria, these caused 1/3 of all deaths; 30% of deaths were to children under 5.

By 1921, heart disease had become the leading cause of death; now, the leading causes of death are heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Pneumonia, flu, and HIV cause less than 5%.

Five factors led to the control of infectious diseases – 3 involve my heroes.

1. Disease surveillance and control, thank you John Snow
2. Discovery of microorganisms as the cause of disease; thank you, Louis Pasteur
3. Improvements in sanitation and hygiene,
4. Discovery of antibiotics, (in 1928, coming into wide use during WW II
5. Universal childhood vaccine programs, that started in 1962 thank you Jonah

It’s 1956, and I love the UN. One of the perks of growing up in NY is going there on school and family trips. Every Hallowe’en, we Trick or Treat for UNICEF. My sister and I collect little dolls in costumes from around the world that my parents buy at the UN. I want to be a UN tour guide as well as an airline stewardess, a Rockette, and Miss America. I worship the UN, with its colorful flags and its colorful gift shop and its good works for colorful children.

The UN recognizes the primacy of health. It’s charter states that it’s primary objective
is to promote “higher standards of living” and “solutions of international … health”.
The WHO was the first international UN agency. WHOs top priorities at the first World Health Assembly in 1948 were malaria, women’s and children’s health, tuberculosis, venereal disease, nutrition and environmental sanitation.

Today (61 years later), the WHO Web site states “In the 21st century, health is a shared responsibility, involving equitable access to essential care and collective defense against transnational threats.”

The WHO goals this year are still to cut child deaths and improve maternal health, and to combat HIV AIDS malaria and other major diseases, but also to
• Prevent chronic diseases, which plague all people, not only the wealthy
• ensure environmental sustainability
• develop a global partnership for development
• Enhance global health security

I love the high-minded rhetoric of a do-good organization; it reminds me of us.

PH has expanded its focus, to “health promotion” as well as disease prevention; it studies the causes, transmission and control of cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes; it deals with tobacco, alcohol and other drug abuse, violence, suicide, mental health issues, in addition to the spread of infectious diseases.

It’s 1964. Mother and I are sitting at the little table in the kitchen of our Queens apartment, with me facing the refrigerator. I am 18, living at home and majoring in Chemistry at Queens College. Preoccupation with my love life and the frizz in my hair is distracting me from my goal to discover and name a new element – Pfefferium. “Your Grandmother Kate is not your real grandmother,” Mother says. The refrigerator tilts. Mother says, “My mother died in Japan when I was a baby. Her name was Esther; that’s why your middle name is Esta.” My identity tilts, like the refrigerator.
Later, my aunt sends me a letter from the Consulate General of Japan, dated July 17, 1919. It says, “Mrs. Sherower arrived in Yokohama in December 1917 with her husband, Mr. Robert Sherower. Late in October 1918 she was attacked by Spanish fever and taken into the General Hospital where she [was] carefully attended by doctors and warmly nursed by her husband. Notwithstanding these full treatments she passed away on November 3rd and her corpse was buried in public cemetery, at Bluff, Yokohama.”
My Grandmother Esther, memorialized in my middle name, entwines me with
the most devastating epidemic recorded in world history. Some 525 million people were infected – especially those in the prime of life – and about 21 million died in the influenza pandemic of 1918-1920, more than twice as many as died in World War I.
The pandemic spread to nearly every part of the world, even the Arctic and remote Pacific Islands. It was caused by an unusually virulent and deadly influenza A virus of subtype H1N1. Most of its victims were healthy young adults, in contrast to most influenza outbreaks which largely affect juvenile, elderly, or weakened patients. It was nicknamed "Spanish Flu" because Spain was neutral in WWI and had no censorship; the most reliable news on the disease came from Spain, giving the false impression that Spain was the most—if not the only—affected zone.)
In July 1999, the CDC wrote in its weekly morbidity and mortality report, referencing the 1919 flu pandemic and also the emergence of HIV, that “microbes have a remarkable ability to evolve, adapt, and develop drug resistance in an unpredictable and dynamic fashion.” Welcome to the 21st century.

But first: It’s 1978. I ‘m at UCLA to get a masters in PH, after my Peace Corps stint in Samoa. I major in international and family health, and also health education. My life is studded with PH issues. One of the research papers I write is on coping with neonatal death – after my sister gives birth to a baby with anencephalitis who lives for one hour. Three Mile Island happens that year as well as an unintended pregnancy, a mild eating disorder, and the death of my best friend’s 23 year old sister from an asthma attack in the LA smog.

At the APHA’s 1979 Annual Meeting we celebrate the worldwide eradication of smallpox. Boy are we complacent.

During my second year, I intern at the W Hollywood health department where clients speak 21 languages. I start liking LA, it’s a horizontal NY. I go with a PH nurse to visit an Indian man with hepatitis, a Chinese woman with TB, and a young, white man with fever and night sweats who is too fatigued to go to work; we assume he has hepatitis. Only 5 years later do I realize I met one of the first AIDS cases in the US.
In April of 1980 I come to Maryland to interview for a job as health educator in a cardiovascular risk reduction grant. Talbot County is the rural location because of its Health Officer, Dr. Eugene Guthrie, who had worked for the Surgeon General. Not quite a household name. The first factor we address is tobacco. Do you know the public health Bible story? Classic epidemiological studies from the 1950s established the dangers of cigarette smoke and led to the 1964 U. S. Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health, which changed the smoking habits and health of citizens around the world. In Dr G’s office is a miniature fire extinguisher box with a sign that says “Open in extreme emergency only.” The box contains a cigarette.

Dr. G. is my boss for six years. My project address tobacco use, cholesterol, weight control, exercise, and stress. Dr G approves our use of work time to educate about abortion rights; he cuts through political stalemate to place public health nurses in the school health program; he shepherds the creation of Talbot Hospice.

Only 24 years later, at the 40th anniversary of the SG Report on Smoking and Health, do I realize that Dr G spearheaded its publication. The report was the first non-military document printed under military secrecy rules; the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission was worried about leaks, so it was produced in a guarded, bombproof subbasement. The press conference to release the report was held on a Saturday to avoid stock market repercussions. // When Dr G was Director at the Division of Chronic Diseases of the Public Health Service, he oversaw the beginning of mammography to diagnose breast cancer, hospital coronary care units, and the artificial kidney. This past Tuesday, I asked a new acquaintance, who’d been a behavioral scientist for the NIH, if she knew Dr. G. She said, “Are you kidding? What he did was the biggest accomplishment in PH there ever was.” I think we’ll be forming a fan club.

TODAY, 30 years after celebrating the eradication of smallpox, the complacency of the PH community is shattered -- shattered by the emergence of HIV, by the re-emergence of TB (multi-drug resistant), by the increase in deaths from infection, by SARS, by bioterrorism, by avian flu.

In addition to drug resistance, we face
New modes of disease transmission, including
Ventilation systems
Blood transfusions and
worldwide Food distribution.

We face new infectious agents from rainforests and wilderness areas, brought to us by tourists and people in mining, forestry and agriculture

We face treating people who are Immunologically compromised

And of course there is the issue of health care for all; in the world, not just in the US.

In 1946 it was written in the WHO Constitution: Unequal development in different countries in the promotion of health and control of disease, especially communicable disease, is a common danger.

Which is to say, "Global surveillance is only as strong as its weakest link.” I am quoting Lawrence Gostin JAMA, 2004).
He notes that there are staggering legal and ethical implications to safeguarding the public health, worldwide and here in the US.

How would you feel about having your privacy invaded through surveillance of your medical records; your bodily integrity violated by compulsory treatment, or your liberty curtailed by travel restrictions or quarantine? How would you react to being stigmatized, stereotyped, or discriminated against? That’s how my 70 year old friend felt when he was too old to get an H1N1 shot last week.
I want all children to receive their immunizations, but what if it’s my grandchild who is the one with the extremely rare adverse reaction?
How do we ensure the inherent worth and dignity of the next Typhoid Mary, the next Ryan White?

Gostin says that “One of the most important issues that humankind must deal with today is how sovereign countries can join together to make global health work for everyone -- not just the privileged.”
So what can we do?

(From the WHO Constitution, 1946: Informed opinion and active co-operation on the part of the public are of the utmost importance in the improvement of the health of the people.)
1. To stop the spread of disease: wash your hands, stay home when sick, cover your cough, get your vaccinations, and encourage your friends and family to do likewise.
2. Trick or treat for UNICEF, support the UN, support the UUSC, support other reputable organizations that provide health care to the underprivileged globally and locally.
3. Let your legislators know how you feel about universal health care in the US, and about supporting global health initiatives as issues arise.
4. Work with our Social Justice Committee on environmental and health issues, volunteer with the health department, and support our colleagues who work in ph – like Lauren Dutton, Lee Marquess.

Let’s end with a joke

A nurse practitioner, a rabbi and an HMO executive all died and found themselves standing outside the gates of heaven. St. Peter appeared and asked whether they had done anything worthwhile with their lives.
"During my life I healed thousands of sick people," stated the nurse practitioner.
"Okay," said St. Peter. "You may enter."
The rabbi said, "My entire life was spent ministering to the sick and the needy."
"Okay, go on in," said the saint.
"As president of a large health maintenance organization," said the HMO executive, "I was responsible for the health care of millions of people all over the country."
"Okay, I'll admit you," said St. Peter. "But you can only stay for two nights."

UU History and Theology

2009-10-04T15:38:00.001-04:00

by Rev. Gabi Parks

Well, today I plan to tell you all about UU History and Theology. Of course, each of the those two subjects – history and theology – is a three credit class at the seminary. So what you are going to hear today is a very condensed version!

Let me start with our illustrious history: Contrary to popular belief, UU’s are not “one of those new-fangled sects.” Quite contrary: both Unitarianism and Universalism are several centuries old.

The first really famous Unitarian was Michael Servetus, a Spanish physician who lived from 1511 to 1553, and whose physiological studies had made significant contributions to medical science. But he was also writing theological treatises against the union of church and state; and he was one of the first people to write down his ideas about Unitarianism in a book. It was called On the Errors of the Trinity.

The “Trinity” is the Christian belief that God is made up of three parts: God the father, God the son, and God the Holy Spirit. In the 1500’s the rulers of many countries were Christians who believed in this 3-part God and required all people in those countries to believe the same thing.

Michael Servetus believed that Christians should look to the Bible, not to their rulers, for answers about God. He could find no words in the Bible to support this idea of God in three parts. Servetus was persecuted mercilessly by the Spanish Inquisition, but he couldn’t hold back his strong religious feelings. Eventually the Swiss reformer John Calvin came up with a list of 38 accusations against him; and Servetus was burned at the stake.It is interesting to note that he was considered a heretic not only by the Catholics, but also by most Protestants. You just can’t win . . .

The writings of Servetus strongly influenced young Da-vid Ferenc --- or Francis David (1510 - 1579), a Hungarian who - like the whole Unitarian faith - was a product of the Reformation. He started out as a Roman Catholic - then morphed to Lutheran, to Reformed, and to Unitarian. He advocated tolerance and the use of conscience in religious matters.

Dávid studied in Wittenberg, Germany, where Martin Luther had previously taught. But unlike Luther, he challenged the theological concept of the Trinity. Dávid became the court preacher for King John Sigismund of Transylvania. As you heard in the children’s story, there was a lot of discord among the many faiths traditions in Transylvania, and King Sigismund was influenced by Da-vid when he pronounced the Diet of Torda in 1568.

Now you might ask what’s this Diet of Torda? Is that a new weight loss program? And what does it have to do with liberal religion?” Well, no, the Diet of Torda is not a new way for you to lose weight. No, it was an event and also an edict that paved the way for liberal religion, first in Transylvania, then in England, and eventually anywhere Unitarians traveled. You have the full text on the insert in your Order of Service. We can be very proud of this part of our history, because this edict was the first declaration of religious freedom. Not the Edict of Nantes, which is more famous, but which came a full 30 years later!

There are other names connected with our early history, such as Sebastien Castellion and Faustus Socinus, but as I said earlier, we do not have a whole semester . . .

Unitarianism quickly spread, and reached England within a decade. A “Church of the Stranger, Unitarian” was founded in London. In 1647, a young man named John Biddle began preaching anti-Trinitarian beliefs; and in 1654, he published his own Twofold Catechism. He and many other early Unitarians were persecuted until 1689, when England passed the Act of Toleration. More than a hundred years after OUR Diet of Torda!

One man whose name most of you will recognize came from this fertile ground of English Unitarianism: Joseph Priestley. He was a scientist and Anglican priest who - in 1791 - emigrated with his family to PA. He spent the last ten years of his life establishing Unitarian congregations in Philadelphia and Northumberland. Priestley helped to spread Unitarianism beyond the neighborhood of Boston early in the American Unitarian movement. Besides that, he also discovered oxygen . . .

But I just skipped a whole century – let me backtrack a little:

With the Pilgrims, and their Puritan cohorts of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, came the Congregationalism that carried the seeds of later 18th century Unitarianism. But these early colonists were no more tolerant than those they left behind in England! For example, in 1637, they drove a pioneer Universalist by the name of Samuel Gorton, out of Massachusetts for his beliefs.

Another milestone for us was reached in 1648, at a meeting of the Puritan clergy of the four confederated colonies of New England, The so-called "Cambridge Platform" established the idea of congregational polity that has become the cornerstone of Unitarian church organization. It is important to recognize that UU’s are to this day staunch Congregationalists!

The Great Awakening of the mid 18th century brought with it a revival of Calvinism with its belief in original sin and in the salvation of only a select few; and its emphasis on conversion experiences rather than reason or free will. There was not much growth possible for Unitarians or Universalists! But then, on September 30th 1770, John Murray, an English Universalist exile, reluctantly preached his first American sermon in Thomas Potter's meeting House on Barnegat Bay, New Jersey. Murray's ship was marooned on a sandbank for lack of wind. Our one and only claim to a “miracle!” Murray made his way north to Massachusetts, where by 1774 he was preaching Universalism in Gloucester with great success. In 1779, Gloucester Universalists organized the first Universalist Church in America and called Mr. Murray as their minister.
Murray also succeeded to have Universalists exempted from paying tax to the established Puritan congregational church in 1786, and in 1788 he won the right for Universalists to become ordained ministers with authority to perform marriages in Massachusetts.

Only 8 years after the declaration of Independence was signed, the Philadelphia Convention of Universalists adopted a Declaration of Faith and a set of principles of social reform; and in 1793, the General Convention of Universalists was organized at Oxford, Massachusetts.

The first decades of the 19th century saw much Unitarian and Universalist activity. Hosea Ballou, one of my favorite Universalists, published his “Treatise on Atonement,” the first book published in America to openly reject the doctrine of the Trinity. In the same year, Unitarian Henry Ware was elected Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard College, beginning the "Unitarian Controversy" in New England. Soon, Harvard became – theologically - all Unitarian, and Andover Newton was the all Trinitarian Divinity School.

Then in 1819, at an ordination service in Baltimore, Maryland, William Ellery Channing preached his famous sermon defining American Unitarianism. Channing continued to write and preach at the Federal Street Church in Boston, from which pulpit he opposed slavery first in 1835. In 1837, Channing preached another of his famous sermons on "The Sunday School" in which he expounded his radically progressive ideas on the nature and nurture of children and religious education.

Channing was inspiration not only to Unitarian educators like Horace Mann and Elizabeth Peabody, who helped shape the face of American public education, but also to the Transcendentalist movement.

The best-known UU is clearly Ralph Waldo Emerson. He was a Unitarian minister, author and one of the founders of the New England Transcendentalists who were soon world-renowned. Other famous Unitarian Transcendentalists were the journalist and editor Margaret Fuller, who in 1845 published Women in the Nineteenth Century; the great preacher and abolitionist Theodore Parker, and the writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau.

Both Unitarians and Universalists were leading in the acceptance of women as clergy. Already in 1811, the Universalist Maria Cook became the first woman to preach from a pulpit; and in 1863, Unitarian Olympia Brown became the first woman to be theologically trained and ordained by an American church body.

By the middle of the 19th century, Unitarianism had spread West; and the first theological school had been established to educate and train Unitarian ministers, namely Meadville Theological School in Meadville, PA.

(looking at watch) I think I need to skip ahead a few decades into the 20th century: During the 1920s and 1930s, the Unitarian movement was divided by the Humanist-Theist controversy. As early as 1921, John Dietrich and William Sullivan debated Humanism at the National Conference, and in 1933 A Humanist Manifesto was published. There was a lot of conflict in the congregations, until 1937, when under the presidency of Frederick May Eliot, peace was made between the two factions. Eliot encouraged Unitarians to include another expression of Ultimate Importance and religious seeking, and soon scores of humanists became part of the Unitarian denomination.

During WWII, both Unitarians and Universalists reached out to answer the needs of war-torn Europe and its refugees. The Unitarian Service Committee was organized in 1940; and the Universalists organized their Service Committee in 1945 to work in Hungary, Japan, and the Philippines.

By 1949, Unitarians and Universalists, both small in number, began talks about merger into one Association, and by 1953, many departments within the two churches, including Religious Education and the Liberal Religious Youth Movement, had merged. In 1961, the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of America officially consolidated to become the Unitarian Universalist Association of congregations. The spirit of cooperation, the vision for the future of liberal religion, and the work done by countless individuals in both denominations brought about the successful merger of our two liberal religious bodies.

In our search for ways to express our values as liberal religionists, Unitarians and Universalists have historically drawn up statements of the faith values that motivate us. In 1985, the current expression of our Unitarian Universalist Principles and Purposes was adopted, and with some modification continues today to be a guiding and defining statement of the nature of our liberal faith.

Okay, so now that I’ve covered 450 years of history in – what – fifteen minutes, that leaves me five minutes for about a dozen different theologies . . .

By now, of course, you’ve realized that both Unitarians and Universalists were originally Christian denominations. Today, Unitarian Universalists additionally include people who are or were Ba’hai, Buddhists, Hindus, Humanists, Jews, Muslims, Pagans, and others. ...
So there really is no common theology. And yet . . .

Allow me use the concepts of systematic theology - you know, those fancy words like eschatology, pneumatology, missiology, etc? Lots of terms you’ve never heard before - and you do not have to remember them; but they will help us to explore what – if anything – we all believe:

Let’s start with our thoughts about the Ultimate: most UU’s believe in some kind of divine force, transcendent or imminent; but we jokingly say: at most one God.

A large number of us are agnostics, and approximately 40% identify as humanists, some of them atheists, some not.

And what do we believe about revelation? Many UU’s see the Divine manifest in nature, in the human conscience, in our spiritual experiences; and most of us see it revealed in the wisdom of all the sacred texts.

Okay, next! What about our Christology? Approximately 15% of us are Christians. However, most of us accept the teachings of the man Jesus Christ as words of great wisdom and insight. However, we question his divinity.

And when it comes to the doctrine of salvation, a vast majority of UU’s believe that it is not through a savior figure like Jesus Christ, but rather through our own good works that we counter negative influences and overcome evil.

Directly connected to salvation are the concepts of sin and redemption. True to our Universalist roots, most of us believe that we all have inherent worth, and that we can change, improve ourselves, and become better people, without the mediation of a mystical force.

Talking about mystical forces: what about UU pneumatology? It refers to the spirit, the Holy Spirit in traditional Christian lingo. Well, we have the “Spirit of Life” – and we practice a lot of spiritual disciplines such as meditation, chanting, or sacred drumming in our congregations. And, I believe that many of us have experienced the spirit moving in us, or around us.

Another important theological concept I want to touch upon is “missiology.” It asks: what we do with our faith? Do we go out and tell others about it; and do we engage in actions based on our beliefs? Well, about the first part, the answer is: not a lot, to be honest. We are really good at hiding ourselves, with buildings somewhere in the woods, and very small, if any ads in the Yellow Pages or community newspapers. But we are very strong when it comes to work for social justice or for environmental protection. There’s actually a light bulb joke about this: “How many UU’s does it take to change a light bulb? 100. One to hold the bulb and 99 to turn the world around.”

I’ve saved my favorite term for the end: eschatology! If you play Scrabble like me, you gonna love that word! It refers to the “Last Things.” In other words – is there a heaven and hell, will some savior come, what happens after death? Here we UU’s are truly diverse. Many of us believe that “this is it.” We die, and it’s over. And many of us believe in an eternal life of the soul; and many believe in some kind of reincarnation.

Actually, there is one more concept I almost forgot: ecclesiology. This deals with: “what is the nature of our church?” Well, for one, we don’t usually like to call it church! We call ourselves fellowships, societies, and maybe – congregations. For us, church means to be together with like-minded individuals, experiencing community.

Yes, that’s it – we are first and foremost about community. We put a greater premium on relationship in a gathered religious community, than we do on dogma. We are confident that we humans are enriched by embracing differences. We trust that, as Francis David put it centuries ago, “we don’t have to think alike to love alike.”

When one of us expresses his or her religious convictions in the presence of the rest, we may feel challenged to listen respectfully, but we are aware that we are blessed to be present for such a sharing which broadens our minds and hearts and adds to that finite experience we call our own. What unites us are the promises we make – our covenant – to support one another in a religious community. A covenant, rather than shared beliefs about metaphysical questions that are beyond proof. What unites us is the confidence that we can care for one another in community, even though we have different personal beliefs. “We don’t have to think alike to love alike.”

If you’re not a UU yet, I invite you to consider casting your spiritual lot with this local branch of the global family. Enter with us into a community based not on a shared creed – thinking alike – but on the covenant we willingly make with one another – on loving alike.

The Paradox of Religion

2009-08-30T08:47:00.000-04:00

Sermon by Paul Sharp

I recently participated in a seminar on Religions of the East, where the question was raised about the incompatibility of modernism with religion. Countries that demonstrate a high level of modernity, such as Western Europe, also show a much lower rate of church attendance and affiliation than less developed countries.

The country that seems to run counter to these trends is the United States, which has shown an increase in religious affiliation and church attendance over the past decades. But maybe the United States isn’t as modern as it seems. It’s pretty hard to think of the U.S. as a modern country when a sizeable percentage of the population, including a recent president, refuses to accept any science that might disagree with a book written 2,000 years ago. Perhaps modernism in the United States simply follows the pattern of thinking Gandhi demonstrated when asked what he thought of Western Civilization. “I think it would be a good idea,” he replied.

But not all modern and educated people reject religion. Because in order to have a meaningful discussion about religion and its impact on modern life, you first have to determine what kind of religion we’re talking about. Are we talking about the religion taught by a Jewish reformer on the hillsides of Galilee 2,000 years ago, or are we talking about the religion of the Spanish Inquisition which burned at the stake thousands of people who disagreed with their doctrines? Are we talking about the religion that inspired thousands of people to resist the deportation and extermination of the Jewish people during World War II, or are we talking about the religion that stood silently by and let those depredations occur? All of these religions share the same name, Christianity, but they are not the same religion.

Asking whether religion is a force for good or evil is a little like asking who is smarter, men or women. There is only one intelligent response to that question, and it’s another question – “which man, and which woman?” To answer whether religion is a force for good or evil you first have to ask, “which religion, and operating in which individual?”

The paradox of religion, that it can inspire the most selfless acts of compassion, and the most depraved forms of inhumanity, is rooted in the deepest of all paradoxes – that of human nature itself. Human nature is neither all good nor all evil – but both simultaneously, and it is up to the individual to choose which path to take.

The positive aspects of religion arise out of the better angels of human nature; our capacity to love, to grow, and share. Negative religion, the religion of hatred, intolerance, and persecution, arises out of the darker side of human nature – the fear of the unknown, indifference to suffering, and intellectual rigidity.

The Grand Inquisitor

The best illustration I’ve discovered of the paradox between the positive and negative manifestations of religion is found in The Grand Inquisitor, a short story within the novel The Brothers Karamazov, by Fedor Dostoyevsky. The story is told by one brother, Ivan, a non-believer, to his deeply religious brother Alyosha.

The story takes place in Seville during the Spanish Inquisition, the day after one hundred heretics had been burned at the stake. Jesus comes back to earth and walks among the people, and they instantly recognize him. There, in the Grand Plaza, a funeral procession for a young girl emerges from the Cathedral, and the mother rushes to Jesus, falls to her knees and begs him to heal her daughter. He touches the girl and she rises from the dead.

At that moment, the Grand Inquisitor happens by, sees the event and orders his guards to seize Jesus. So powerful is the Grand Inquisitor’s hold on the people that everyone steps aside as the guards escort Jesus to prison.

That night, the old inquisitor comes to the cell where Jesus is being held, and begins to interrogate him, but Jesus says nothing. There then ensues one of the most fascinating conversations in all literature. Jesus never says a word. In fact, the old man forbids him to speak.

The Grand Inquisitor reminds Jesus of the three temptations Jesus underwent at the beginning of his ministry. Jesus had been fasting for 40 days and nights, when Satan appeared to him in the wilderness. He tempted Jesus to turn stones into bread, but Jesus refused saying “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”

The Grand Inquisitor chides him, saying that if he had provided bread to the masses, all the world would have followed him, ushering in a new era of peace and prosperity. “But you would not deprive man of that freedom; thinking what is that freedom worth if obedience is bought with bread. Instead you offered them the bread of heaven. And if for the sake of the bread of heaven thousands shall follow you, what is to become of the thousands of millions of creatures who lack the strength to forgo the earthly bread for the sake of the heavenly? Choosing bread, you could have satisfied the universal and everlasting craving of humanity – to find someone to worship. For the sake of common worship they’ve slain each other with the sword, and so it will be to the end of the earth.”

For the second temptation, Satan carried Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple. “If you are the son of God,” he said, “cast yourself down. And God will send angels to catch you.” But Jesus again refused, saying “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord, thy God.”

But the Grand Inquisitor tells Jesus that when man rejects miracle he rejects God also. If Jesus truly loved mankind, he would have provided them the miracle and the mystery they longed for.

In the third temptation Satan took Jesus to the top of a mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the earth, and their glory, and said, “All these things will I give thee if thou will bow down and worship me.” Jesus refuses, saying “Thou shalt worship the Lord, thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.”

But the Grand Inquisitor rebukes Jesus. “If you had taken Caesar’s purple, you would have founded the universal state and given universal peace. We have taken the sword of Caesar, and in taking it have rejected you and follow him. We have done this for the sake of your children, for the weak and sinful and rebellious who are unable to follow you and your teachings.”

“It is prophesied that you will come again in victory” the Inquisitor tells Jesus. “You will come with your chosen, but we will say that they have only saved themselves, but we have saved all. I will stand up and point out to you the thousand millions of happy children who have known no sin. And I will stand up and say to you: “Judge us if you can and dare.”

The Grand Inquisitor goes on to say, “I too was like you, and I too was striving to stand among your elect, among the strong and powerful. But I awakened and would not serve madness. I turned back and joined the ranks of those who have corrected your work. Tomorrow, you shall see that obedient flock who at a sign from me will hasten to heap up the hot cinders about the pile on which I shall burn you. For if anyone has ever deserved our fires, it is you.”

At this point in the story, Alyosha, the religious brother, interrupts Ivan. “But ... that’s absurd,” he says. “Your Grand Inquisitor is mad – it’s a mere fantasy.”

“Perhaps,” Ivan admits. “Or perhaps he’s speaking honestly for the first time in his life.”

“How does the story end?” Alyosha asks.

“I meant it to end like this,” Ivan continues. “When the Inquisitor ceased speaking he waited some time for his Prisoner to answer him. His silence weighed down upon him. He saw that the Prisoner had listened intently all the time, looking gently in his face and evidently not wishing to reply. The old man longed for him to say something, however bitter and terrible. But he suddenly approached the old man in silence and softly kissed him on his bloodless aged lips. That was all his answer. The old man shuddered. His lips moved. He went to the door, opened it, and said to Jesus: ‘Go, and come no more...come not at all, never, never!’ And he let Jesus out into the dark alleys of the town. The Prisoner went away.”

“And the old man?” asks Alyosha.

“The kiss glows in his heart, but the old man adheres to his idea.”

These are, I think, the most terrible and sad words in all literature. They are the essence of the paradox of religion, the fearful realization that institutions created to ensure the happiness of mankind could also be responsible for so much suffering in the world. But there is a way out of this dark tunnel and a way to resolve the paradox of religion.

Resolving the Paradox

Religion is normally thought of as composed of three elements – theology, morality, and community. While differences can occur in any of these areas, the area most likely to cause problems is theology or doctrine. For example, look at the split between Catholic and Protestant religions, which led to the wars that decimated Europe in the 1500’s and 1600’s. While Catholics and Protestants agreed on many areas of theology, they disagreed about papal authority and the need for internal reform. Today, there are thousands of separate religious entities, each proclaiming a separate doctrine, and all convinced that they, and they alone, possess the complete and absolute truth.

Since doctrine is the cause of so much division among people, the simple and most logical solution is to replace the theological element of religion with something more universal. That something is the concept of spirituality – the direct experience of the individual with the ultimate reality of the universe.

Spirituality is not only the universal antidote for the paradox of religion, but it is most likely the origin of religion itself. As Eric Hoffer explains in his book The True Believer, “A rising religious movement is all change and experiment – open to new views and techniques from all quarters. Islam when it emerged was an organizing and modernizing medium. Christianity was a civilizing and modernizing influence among the savage tribes of Europe. The conservatism of a religion – its orthodoxy – is the inert coagulum of a once highly reactive sap.” In other words, theology and doctrine arise only when a religion has lost its spiritual dynamism. Or as George Santayana once said, “A fanatic is someone who redoubles his efforts once he’s lost sight of his goals.”

There are, of course, difficulties in converting from a doctrine based system to a spirituality based system. First, spirituality demands active participation on the part of those involved, whereas theology requires only passive acquiescence. You can’t fake spirituality – it is the real article or nothing at all. There are no short cuts to spirituality – just as there are no shortcuts to a happy life or a successful marriage.

If you go back to the origins of the Christian religion, and strip away all the accumulations of doctrine and organization, you will discover that Christianity was simply an attempt to infuse spirituality into the Jewish faith. If you read the Sermon on the Mount, you find that there is nothing whatsoever said about what we are to believe – it is all about how to live and act in the world. In fact, the one class of people that Jesus condemns are the scribes and Pharisees, who had elevated doctrine above spirituality, and valued conformity over compassion.

The other difficulty of spirituality is that it leaves little room for smug self-satisfaction. One of the reasons that people join organizations is the sense of identity and even superiority it gives them by excluding others. If you’re a Catholic, you may be a miserable sinner, but at least you’re not like those awful Protestants who reject the authority of the Mother Church. And if you’re a Protestant, you rejoice you’re not like those Roman Papists who let the Vatican do their thinking for them. Whatever group we belong to, we feel that our membership gives us a certain inside track to enlightenment, status, and power.

But spirituality has no tolerance for such shallow thinking. I suppose you can do a form of mental jujitsu and take pride in the fact that you don’t take pride in your exclusive associations. I suppose it’s possible to rejoice in the fact that you’re exclusively inclusive, unlike those terrible fundamentalist who seem to hate anyone who doesn’t agree with them. But for the most part spirituality demands a form of tolerance and compassion that is incompatible with the division and conflict that is at the heart of the paradox of religion.

Many will say, “I don’t need a religion to experience spirituality, or to live a moral life. I experience spirituality whenever I’m in nature, or contemplate the vastness of the universe.” And of course they’re right. In fact, many religions, by concentrating on doctrines and theology, actually detract from your experience of spirituality. But a spirituality centered religion allows you to focus on the critical aspects of existence, and provides a forum in which to explore and grow that spirituality. And the addition of community provides an opportunity to share that experience with others, and learn and grow from their combined insights.

Once you replace doctrine and theology with spirituality, an interesting thing happens to religion. The interactions become much more positive. Morality and spirituality, for example, interact to form compassion. Spirituality and community interact to shape worship. And morality and community interact to foster justice, infused with caring rather than simply law enforcement. And at the center, the three elements fuse to form a more vibrant religion, one that is alive to new ideas and possibilities, and that celebrates the wonderful diversity of the human race.

Unitarians are uniquely situated to serve as a beacon toward a spiritual definition of religion. Not because they’re smarter or more compassionate than others, (although they are usually pretty smart, and generally compassionate), but because their entire faith is based upon a mutual respect and understanding of the beliefs of others. Because their religion is non-doctrinal, they are freed to concentrate on the spiritual aspects of religion, and in doing so, can touch base with the original function of religion – to help individuals find meaning in the universe.

However, being a spiritual beacon is not without peril. As the life of Jesus showed, and the shootings at the Unitarian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee dramatically demonstrated, the forces of intolerance are alive and kicking, and the Grand Inquisitors of the world still strive to impose their values upon the rest of mankind. All we can do is resolve that in our own lives and our own communities that our religion will be a force for good, and a light unto the world. Or as we say at the end of each service – “Carry the flame within you.”