My Chalice in the Kudzu
Denny Lauer Talk at UUFEC, 27 Sep 03
(Please excuse some of the grammatical errors; I’ve typed this to be spoken and some sentences are incomplete and I’ve capitalized some words for emphasis as notes)
For the last three Sundays, our minister Rev Rod Debs has been speaking on Unitarian Universalism and used the Flaming Chalice as a common thread. The Chalice as a symbol Of the Light of Truth, the Warmth of, and commitment to Community, and the Energy of Action.
At a Conference, our District Executive, Eunice Benton, gave a talk she called ‘The Chalice in the Kudzu’. Eunice spoke on the unique brand of Southern Unitarian Universalist spirituality, comparing spirituality to the flame of the chalice and how Unitarian Universalism is growing like Kudzu through the South.
I have gained new insights from Rod’s talks and I love Eunice’s analogy of what is it to be a UU in the South. So now I’ll take a shot at talking about Unitarian Universalism, about my Chalice here in the Kudzu.
I really can’t be considered a true Southerner; born in California and brought up moving pretty much all over the place, my roots didn’t start here. But all of my adult life was spent south of the Mason-Dixon and while not a fan of some of what is considered Southern Heritage, I feel a strong kinship with this region of Tradition and Family, of good hospitality and caring at the Individual level. Yes, you can say the same about most regions, but it is particularly strong here, probably because this area is more rural and conservative – fewer major cities to dominate the culture.
And our brand of Unitarian Universalism seems to reflect this. We have only a few large UU Churches. Although we may see Our Fellowship as a small community, this Fellowship is the 7th largest of the 32 societies in our District. While we have grown and appear to be on the brink of more change with our new Minister, our Fellowship has been able to keep its character of intimacy and friendliness, much as it was with 40 members when I joined.
Eunice’s analogy raised two issues that I have been thinking about for a while: Spirituality and the Growth of our movement. Combined and put as a question, since we UU’s just love to question: Why does this community exist? Why join and make financial and personal commitments?
As UU’s, we honor the Individual path; we have workshops such as ‘Build Your Own Theology’. What is the point of a community such as ours if the goal is to reach an individual relationship with a higher calling then self, what some call God? Especially since there is strong evidence that religious organizations tend to block personal growth; that churches do just the opposite of why we think they exist. Is that true here?
While at our General Assembly in Boston this last June, Rev O’Neill of a Delaware congregation spoke on why he thinks we attend our particular church or fellowship. He reminded us that each of us probably pass a half dozen churches getting to our own; so why pick this one?
Well, since he is in Delaware and not the Florida Panhandle, he may not quite realize how different this Fellowship is from many of the churches we pass – but that aside, why attend? Why not watch a good documentary, or listen to NPR if you want to be intellectually challenged Sunday morning? Sometimes we UU’s confuse what our church is about, and our services tend to sound like a Rotary meeting; informative, timely and even community-oriented, but the service is a bit light on what some call the Spiritual, but more on that later. Why attend a church that can’t promise you Heaven or threaten you with Hell?
Rev O’Neill said, “A church, finally, is nothing more than its people and what they bring to it; their faith, their vision, their collective hopes and dreams, their memories and their customs; their history, their prayers, their good works and their values. And what community we are able to create here for ourselves is like a great stained glass window, pieced together with painstaking love and unending patience. Each bringing one more mosaic to the whole.”
I think about that analogy when I look at our beautiful windows. Thank you, Susan for bringing these to us.
So is it a need of community the reason we attend? Are we here because of friends and family? I know it would be very difficult for me to attend if my wife, Karen, didn’t. Am I here because Karen is here? She certainly brought me here 14 years ago, but I am now fully committed as an individual. At times one of us runs hot and the other cold – There are times one of us loses some of the spark and we think of quiet Sunday mornings at home. It would certainly cut down the hassle and simplify life, I guess. But then it passes and here we are.
And the need of community as a reason makes us no different from any other religious community. Why here, why a UU Fellowship?
Rev John Wolf the Minister of the Tulsa UU church wrote: “There is only one reason for joining a Unitarian Universalist church and this is: To Support It.
You want to support it because it stands against superstition and fear. Because this church points to what is noblest and best in human life. Because it is open to women and men of whatever race, creed, color, place of origin, or sexual orientation. You want to support it because it has a free pulpit. Because you can hear ideas expressed which would cost any other minister his or her job. You want to support it because it is a place where children come without being saddled with guilt or terrified of some celestial Peeping Tom. Where they can learn that religion is for joy, for comfort, for gratitude and love. You want to support it because it is a place where walls between people are torn down, rather than built up. Because it is a place for the religious displaced, the refugees from mixed marriages, the unwanted freethinkers and those who insist against orthodoxy that they must work out their own beliefs. You want to support it because it is more concerned with human beings than with dogmas. Because it searches for the holy, rather than dwelling upon the depraved.
Because it calls no one a sinner, yet knows how deep is the struggle in each person’s breast and how great the hunger for what is good. You want to support it because you can laugh. Because it stands for something in a day when religion is still more concerned with platitudes than with prejudice and war. You want to support it Not because it buys you some insurance policy towards your funeral service, but because it insults neither your intelligence not your conscience, and because it calls you to worship what is truly worthy of your sacrifice. There is only one reason for joining a UU church; To Support It!”
That speaks directly to me. I love working for this Fellowship making it a place others want to join and helping our Fellowship grow.
But is growth a goal in itself? No, of course not. But if we support this Fellowship, we must do it because it means something to us, because it meets some personal need, and we want it to continue. And the logic then is: Should we not want to share what We found here?
Shouldn’t we want our movement to grow like Kudzu through the South?
When this Fellowship decided to move to this building so that we could grow, a number of members actively worked against this move. Their fear was a large influx of new people would change the church into something they wouldn’t fit into. And they were partially right. This community did change. We strive to keep the intimacy and the personal; there Are ways without trying to limit growth. But we cannot stop change, not by trying to limit growth.
One consequence would be Stagnation. I have seen UU churches that have resisted or shunned growth, trying to hold on to what they think will be lost. But they do change – they become a cliquish self-absorbed group of people who seem happy in their isolation. Cut off from any true growth of themselves. Sometimes we think if we could just keep part of our lives stable and secure from what we see as the chaos of the world, an oasis of comfort, than all will be well.
But that isn’t the point of a church; it isn’t here to just comfort and makes us feel secure, it is here to challenge us. We may not accept those challenges, but that is an individual decision.
I remember reading: Our church is here it comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. A bit harsh; but there are times I need the soothing comfort of our community, and there are times I need afflicting – to step beyond self. If I don’t get that Here, then Where?
A minister who was with us a few years ago described us as a folksy, little inwardly turned Fellowship. I took strong issue with his description. But after thinking through what he said in such a mean-spirited way, I realized he was right in some ways. One of the hallmarks of our Fellowship is its openness and friendliness; we greet and make our visitors feel welcome. And we work hard at moving new members into active participation where they challenge us with changes in areas we have let sit idle too long. We certainly are friendly and open, and I guess he considered that ‘folksy’, being from Minnesota and all.
But as to inwardly turned? There was truth to that also. We’ve worked hard keeping our Fellowship up and going and it took a great deal of energy of a lay-lead all-volunteer Fellowship, and we didn’t seem to have a lot to give to the community at large except as individuals.
Our involvement as a religious community was sporadic. But I believe that is one of the major drives of bringing in a community minister. So that we can expand service to our community as a UU entity.
Now, I hope our new minister doesn’t get too nervous. There is always a tendency for a church, after making such a step as we have made, to expect big changes.
Rev Debs is not the one who will change us. We are the ones to change this Fellowship. We will be the ones that will make this Fellowship grow and become more active in our community. And we need to challenge ourselves to bring in the people to help us.
We certainly are an open and inviting church. But do we invite our neighbors and friends? Do we proactively invite people to join us?
I’m not suggesting that we join the Mormons and start canvassing neighborhoods knocking on doors. Can you see that? First thing that would happen is I knock on someone’s door and they would ask, ‘What do UU’s believe’, or ‘I hear UU’s don’t believe in God’. And
I would respond, ‘Well that depends on which UU you ask’ and I would spend the next 3 hours explaining all the various opinions, especially my own. I would never get out the door, much less through a neighborhood!
We sometimes see being a UU as some sophisticated, exotic taste that doesn’t carry well into the general public.
But in truth, many people accept our beliefs and would be comfortable in our Fellowship. One of the reasons that Universalism didn’t grow is because many mainline dominations co-opted its central theme, the rejection of Hell and Damnation. A large number of seminaries teach a Christianity that is more Unitarian than Trinitarian with a strong liberal theology; the Episcopalians accepted a gay bishop and many Methodist Churches conduct gay and lesbian unions.
Many Christians see the Christ as metaphor; they don’t believe in a virgin birth, or in the physical resurrection. They continue to use the language, but have redefined it.
So maybe our movement will not become as large as the Baptists, but what we stand for can become part of the larger spiritual community because as we move in new directions, it becomes more acceptable and becomes part of the mainstream. Others take our ideas, our precepts as their own and we can rejoice in them joining us.
Maybe we shouldn’t be quite so reticent of inviting friends and neighbors. They may be looking for a place that allows them to grow beyond the old dogmas, where they can free their soul to expand and challenge themselves to open their minds and hearts in new directions, and start the journey of a liberating theology.
So here we are, supporting this UU Fellowship and helping it grow. But what do we gain as an individual by attending?
I attend so that I can serve. I need to light my Chalice and help our movement to grow like Kudzu in the South.
I attend because I need to be part of this community of believers, and yes I see us as believers. We sometimes define ourselves by what we don’t believe instead of a positive view of what do we believe.
I believe that the only way I can be challenged and grow is Here. Here, I have learned a better way to live than before and part of that learning has been to grow a spiritual view. All my years attending more traditional churches, I never felt a spiritual connection. But here, I have learned as a UU how to use my spiritual eye, that subjective eye within.
I can read good books and be challenged with new ideas from so many sources. But here, I have to live the life I say I want; I must serve; I must do; I must live the Now, not the tomorrow or the yesterday.
Through so many talks from this pulpit, from workshops and retreats, and through just sharing with others, I have gained a new tool that is as important if not more important than the rational, objective approach of evaluation I have used most of my life. As a UU, I have learned how to measure my life with a spiritual view, my actions and my thoughts.
And how does a person who does not believe in the Supernatural define Spirituality; a word usually associated with mysticism and otherworldliness?
The Spiritual Way is what I’m doing and what I am thinking and feeling that assists me in growing beyond my own selfishness and at the same time, the Spiritual Way reflects well on a Greater Good, a Higher Truth.
And when am I touched, when am I challenged at a spiritual level? I am touched spiritually when someone speaks from a personal view to challenge me, speaking from their very being, their soul.
I feel the spirit through music and song, through poetry. When someone speaks from their soul, it touches my soul.
So I am here to Serve, to be part of a Community of Believers and to grow Spiritually. Because as I grow spiritually, I become the true me. I have no hope of a heaven or fear of hell, no belief in some Greater Being that measures me on how well I do in carrying out his or her grand plan. I don’t even believe that there is some special direction to life, that there is a rational or ultimate power outside of us that we are all inexorably moving towards, no special plan of God.
No, I try to measure my actions by how it helps me to grow and be more open, and how it reflects on the Ultimate Concerns of each of us as individuals, and of all of us as a common people, which I Can call God. And using that definition, how can there be an atheist? But that really isn’t the point. Whether a god is acknowledged or a common good at the individual and community level, the point is to keep asking yourself the important questions that help you become your true self. And here is where I can ask.
But although I am a UU, I am still petty and mean-spirited and gossipy, selfish and ego-driven. I am not Born Again – no single action or instance has or could set me on the Right Path. I have to work at it every day; but by using this spiritual tool I can grow beyond my selfish view and become the true me.
I can say it that way, or I can say I can become what God wants me to become. Either way, I am walking the Spiritual Path, growing on this journey by trying to understand the questions I need to ask.
The questions that help me become a better father and husband; a better neighbor and member of this community, a person that I can accept. Then working to answer these questions for myself, not expecting some final infinite goal, and realizing the subjective ness of even the most deeply accepted Truths. I just travel this path, growing, falling, failing, picking myself up and stepping back out.
It may sound a bit odd to some when I speak of the spiritual path as a Unitarian Universalist. How can someone be moral and spiritual without the foundation of a personal god, without the Christ? Isn’t spirituality a mark of traditional churches? Doesn’t spirituality require a god or goddess, a holy manual written by the finger of God millennia ago with full directions and Ultimate Truths imbedded for the Believer to decipher?
Our Fellowship has struggled with this word for years. Many have said they want more ‘spiritual’ services. One of the more common complaints is, ‘That service had nothing spiritual’. We once spent a weekend retreat discussing Spirituality. The problem is, when each of us defines spirituality, we define it with such different language.
But one of the more common threads is spirituality means something beyond self that makes us ask the big questions of ourselves, and is presented from a personal perspective.
When someone speaks or more correctly lectures us and we don’t feel any spiritual connection, it is usually because nothing is shared, little humanity speaking to some higher goal. It is a rational, hands-off discussion. The speaker doesn’t share any of their self, anything from their soul, as if we can’t be trusted.
So is that what spirituality is – a personal story? No, Spirituality has to be something beyond just a sharing of emotions, feelings.
It must challenge me, and it must reflect a higher calling than self, a greater good which is within each of us. And as I share, I am more open to this higher calling, forcing me to ask questions that many times I’d rather not ask, but I know I must.
But many times we as UUs are more comfortable with the rational level and not the spiritual because of Old definitions and Fears of what was thought of as Spirituality.
As Spirituality has nothing to do with the supernatural, it is also beyond only looking at the self, in some narcissistic love-fest of turning me into god. I may be part of the Greater Yearning, but I am not the ultimate goal. If I make myself the center, then I miss the whole point of spirituality, and of life itself.
All I’ve done is find just another way of focusing on Me. And trust me on this, I don’t need another way of making myself the center of my own being – that is hardwired and I don’t need any help with that one.
We can be spiritually touched with discussions of community, the environment and the larger world. In an appeal from an activist. And many times, this is the Highest Spirituality: that which takes us beyond our self, into the community challenging us to serve, whether it is our own, or the world community. Helping us to tear down the walls and build bridges towards those that differ with us in their religious or political views.
For me, the importance is to be challenged to step out of my set beliefs and old biases. We can use this spiritual view of life to gain something beyond the familiar. We can challenge ourselves to grow beyond our level of comfort we are at now.
We as UU’s talk about how we tear walls down, but some of us have our own walls. How can we quit putting up walls when the word God is spoken from this bully pulpit? How can we listen to someone speak of the depth of understanding we can gain from the Hebrew Bible, or from Christian Scriptures without becoming so defensive.
When a Non-Christian theist shares with us, when scripture or story from another spiritual path is used, such as a myth from Native Americans, we accept it at face value, and gain some insight. But when it comes to the words of the major religion of our culture, many UU’s tighten up and become so defensive with the god-talk or with references to the Hebrew Bible and Christian Scriptures.
We usually ask two questions: Is what is being said actually True, and do I Like the god being depicted. Neither is pertinent and we miss an opportunity to gain new insight that could touch our soul. We are too busy Objectifying what is said instead of listening with our spiritual ear to gain a new perspective. Can we not use these spiritual tools and try to understand what it says to us personally? Does it challenge us to grow and expand beyond self? My personal view is our Christian and theistic brethren take their highest hopes and dreams and goals and project them onto the Christ, and that is then their definition of God.
Not an original idea, but the point is, when those of us who do not follow the Biblical god, speak of a higher good, we are speaking of the same goals as a theist who sees god as a True Entity.
In some ways, we are talking Semantics. I’m not suggesting we take on the cloak and language of another religion such as Christianity.
I personally would not be comfortable trying to Wedge my spiritual view into a set form and I would do myself Spiritual Harm in limiting myself with the old language.
But I can listen and understand the underlying meaning of what another is saying and be in Partnership with my theist friends in gaining a new insight I may not have gained otherwise.
One thing this Fellowship has shown me is how each of us can change no matter what point we are at in life. We once had a Minister who in his late 60’s left the Southern Baptist Convention and became a UU Minister.
This is not just some change in title; it took him years of study and commitment at a time in his life most are retiring with no plans of changing anything, especially our whole basis of self. He stepped away from defining his life through laws and rules set up two thousand years ago, and accepted the direct responsibility of taking his own path. I believe The Buddha would have been proud of him, as would Jesus.
I’ve seen many of our members, especially me, step back from a set position when challenged and look at a new idea, a different approach and accept it as their own. We can change if we wish; we can take on a new view of life around us.
I will always be the rationalist and the skeptic; but now, I have the tools of spirituality that have opened new vistas that help me ask questions of myself and of my definitions of self that challenge me to grow beyond self.
Spirituality is the Oil in the Lamp that I light to guide my way, to Light My Chalice in the Kudzu as Unitarian Universalism grows across the South. Not as some sect replacing the old ways, making our 7 principles into the new dogma, but a religious community that can help each to find a path on the journey that has So Many Paths. You may use different words than me, the language doesn’t matter. What matters is that we open ourselves to new challenges to grow and Here in this Fellowship, is a place that allows you to do just that.
