Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Emerald Coast

Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Emerald Coast
“To Save the Soul of America”
Rev. Rod Debs
January 15, 2012 

Story for All Ages  “The Hardest Teaching: Love Your Enemies” 

This morning I want to ask you about enemies. 

- Are there people whom you sometimes feel are your enemies? 

- Who are some of the people you feel are your enemies?

- What have they done that makes you feel that they are your enemies?

- Do you ever want to yell at them or hit them? 

- What happens when you hurt your enemies?  Do they get mad and do worse things to you? 

         Do you get into trouble with your parents or teachers?  … with their friends? 

- Then what happens? 

They call this the “cycle of violence.”  Things get worse and worse when you do something hurtful to your enemies and then someone they know does something hurtful back to you—and on and on.

Tomorrow in Dr. Martin Luther King Holiday.  There will be a parade in Fort Walton Beach tomorrow for anyone who wishes to honor Dr. King.  You can walk with us in the parade and even help carry our Unitarian Universalist Fellowship banner. The reason we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King is because he showed us a better way to treat our enemies—with kindness and without hurting them.

Dr. Martin Luther King was a follower of Jesus.  Dr. King tried to treat his enemies the way Jesus treated his enemies, the way Jesus taught how to treat enemies.  Jesus said:  “Love your enemies.”  Treat your enemies with loving-kindness.  If they do bad things to you, Jesus taught, “Do not return evil for evil.”  Don’t do bad things back to them.  Be kind to your enemies.  What do you think?

I think this is Jesus’ hardest teaching:  Loving-kindness toward your enemies.  It might not work every time.  People might still be mean to you even if you are always kind to them.  But sometimes, when your enemies realize that you will be kind no matter what they do, sometimes they will stop hurting you because they realize that you are a friend. 

Loving kindness might not work every time.  But we do know, if you hurt your enemies, you can be sure that your enemies or their friends will try to get revenge on you.  Hurting enemies doesn’t make friends of them. 

Maybe we shouldn’t even call them “enemies” or “bad guys.”  Maybe we should call them people like us who sometimes do bad things.  They might actually be friends if we act like friends to them.

Message  This morning I wish to share words by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with only a few comments of my own.  Dr. King:  “Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral.  It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.  It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert.  Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love.  It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible.  It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue.  Violence ends by defeating itself.  It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.” 

“I’ve seen too much hate to want to hate, myself, and I’ve seen hate on the faces of too many sheriffs, too many White Citizens Councilors, and too many Klansmen of the South to want to hate, myself; and every time I see it, I say to myself, hate is too great a burden to bear.  Somehow we must be able to stand up before our most bitter opponents and say: ‘We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering.  We will meet your physical force with soul force.  Do to us what you will and we will still love you…. Throw us in jail and we will still love you.  Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you.  Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hour and drag us out on some wayside road and leave us half-dead as you beat us, and we will still love you.  Send your propaganda agents around the country and make it appear that we are not fit, culturally and otherwise, for integration, but we’ll still love you.  But be assured that we’ll wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom.  We will not only win freedom for ourselves, we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.’” 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. uses specific words to contrast the spirit of relationships we have with people we sometimes call “enemies” rather than “friends.”  He speaks of “love” and “hatred.”   Of “violence” and “compassion.” 

I grew up with what I feel is Jesus’ hardest teaching:  “Love your enemies.”  I didn’t have a real understanding of love.  Heck, I didn’t even like a lot of people, and I was angry with those who did what I felt were bad things.  I tried to feel loving toward everyone, but it was unreal, artificial, dishonest.  Only later in life have I come to think of love and hatred as conscious choices, intentions as opposed to feelings/emotions.  

There is a Native American story about two wolves within us: one, kind, and the other, cruel.  The youth asks grandfather which one is stronger, and grandfather says, “The one you feed.” 

Feeling angry or appreciative toward people seems to be one thing, but intentionally nurturing love or hatred, longing to kindness or to hurt on another, seem to be something different: feelings versus intention and action.  I learned from Buddhists to speak of intention and action in one word, loving-kindness.  

No matter how I feel toward someone who I think is hateful and hurtful, it is possible to rise above the animal response of hating-hurtfulness.  We humans can choose to be kind and loving—even when we’re angry.  It takes practice calming ourselves.  Consider how African-Americans survived in white-supremist America, how Vietnamese Buddhists survived in a war-zone.  Calming one’s anger was necessary for survival.  

Choosing to nurture love or hate is a choice all of us have in relating to those who are different from us, those we see as competitors or opponents.  In society, our choices determine whether we live in a virtual war-zone, or in communities of mutual trust.  Beyond our anger, what wolf will we feed?  What wolf will dominate? 

Loving and hateful intentions eventually become real when we act on them through kindness or hurtfulness.  No matter whether we feel hot or warm toward people, we can practice calming ourselves first.  Then we can practice acts of loving-kindness rather than hateful-hurting.  We will all make mistakes, but calming and redirecting our reactive emotions can be practiced and nurtured in others. 

In 1957, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference chose as its motto:  “To save the soul of America.”  They organized to resist the wolf of white-supremism and to nurture the wolf of loving-kindness in America.  Ten years later, Dr. King wrote these words:  “We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.” (Massey Lectures, Canadian Broadcasting Company, 1967, in The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. edited by James M. Washington, 1986, p.636) 

“What do the (Vietnamese) peasants think, as we ally ourselves with the landlords…. We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village.  We have destroyed their land and their crops.  We have cooperated in crushing one of the nation’s only non-Communist revolutionary political forces, the United Buddhist church.  We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon.  We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men…. We must speak for them, and raise the questions they cannot raise.  These, too, are our brothers…. (p.637-8) 

“Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when they help us to see the enemy’s point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves.  For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition. (p.638) 

In preparing for this Martin Luther King, Jr. message, I was surprised how well Dr. King’s last speeches directly relate to our world, forty-five years later.  Dr. King said:    “I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing.  The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit.  In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution.  I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values…. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast between poverty and wealth…, individual capitalists… investing huge sums of money… only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say:  `This is not just.’  The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.  A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: `This way of settling differences is not just.’ This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love.  A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom…. 

“These are revolutionary times; all over the globe (people) are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression…. people of the land are rising up as never before…. We must find new ways to speak for peace… and for justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors.  If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.” (p. 639-40) 

I am reminded of the proverb:  “Be careful who your enemies are, for you can become just like them.”  It seems to me, we might be well advised to speak of all persons as friends, some of whom, like us, do terrible things sometimes.  

Over 750 years ago, St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) said:  “We must love them both – those whose opinions we share and those whose opinions we reject.  For both have labored in the search for truth, and both have helped us in the finding of it.”  We don’t have to like them, but for our own soul’s health, we must have loving intentions and act with kindness especially with those whose opinions we reject, even those who intend and act with hate and violence toward us. 

One of our own, Ralph Waldo Emerson articulates this Unitarian Universalist faith.  He wrote:  “Trust (people) and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.” 

In closing, I offer the soul-saving teachings of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount, and those of Vietnamese Buddhist, Thich Nhat Hanh. From the Book of Matthew, we read:     

“Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors;
     only so can you be children of your heavenly Father,
     who makes his sun rise on good and bad alike,
     and sends the rain on the honest and the dishonest….
There must be no limit to your goodness,
     as your heavenly Father’s goodness knows no bounds.”  (Matthew 5:44-45,48, NEV)

  Thich Nhat Hanh offers this soul-saving wisdom: 

 “Though we all have the fear
        and seeds of anger within us,
   we must learn not to water those seeds,
        and instead, nourish our positive qualities—
   those of compassion, understanding,
        and loving kindness.”     (Thich Nhat Hanh)

Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Emerald Coast
“Investing in Paradise”
Rev. Rod Debs
December 18, 2011

Story for All Ages: 1. “The Quiltmakers Gift”  by Jeff Brumbeau, pictures by Gail de Murcken

2.  There was once a quiltmaker who kept a house in the blue misty mountains up high.  Everyone said she made the prettiest quilts anyone had ever seen.  The blues seemed to come from the deepest part of the ocean, the whites from the northernmost snows, the greens and purples from the abundant wildflowers, the reds, oranges and pinks from the most wonderful sunsets.

3.  Many people climbed her mountain, pockets bursting with gold, hoping to buy one of the wonderful quilts. But the woman would not sell them. “I give my quilts to those who are poor or homeless,” she told all who knocked on her door.“They are not for the rich.”

4.  On the darkest and coldest nights, the woman would make her way down the mountain to the town below.  There she would wander the cobblestone streets until she came upon someone sleeping outside in the chill.  She would then take a newly finished quilt from her bag, wrap it around their shivering shoulders, tuck them in tight, and tiptoe away.  Then, the very next morning, with a steaming cup of blackberry tea, she would begin a new quilt.

5.  Now at this time there also lived a very powerful and greedy king who liked nothing better than to receive presents.  The hundreds of thousands of beautiful gifts he got for Christmas and for his birthday were never enough.  So a law was passed that the king would celebrate his birthday twice a year. When that still wasn’t enough, he ordered his soldiers to search the kingdom for those few people who had not yet given him a gift.

6.  Over the years, the king had come to own almost all of the prettiest things in the world.  Throughout the castle, from top to bottom, in drawers and on shelves, in boxes and trunks and closets and sacks, all of the king’s countless things were stashed.

7.  Things that shimmered and glittered and glowed, things whimsical and practical, things mysterious and magical.  So many, many things that the king kept a list of all the lists of things he owned.

8.  And yet, with all these marvelous treasures to enjoy, the king never smiled.  He was not happy at all.  He was often heard to say:  “Somewhere there must be one beautiful thing that will finally make me happy,” he was often heard to say.  “And I will have it!”

9.  One day a soldier rushed into the palace with news about a magical quiltmaker who lived in the mountains.  The king stamped his foot.  “And how is it that this person has never given me one of her quilts as a gift?” he demanded.  “She only makes them for the poor, Your Majesty,” the soldier replied.  “And she will not sell them for any amount of money.”  “Well, we shall see about that!” the king roared.

10.  “Bring me a horse and a thousand soldiers.”  And they set off in search of the quiltmaker.  But when they arrived at her house, the quiltmaker merely laughed.  “My quilts are for the poor and needy, and I can easily see that you are neither.”

11.  “I want one of those quilts!” the king demanded.  “It might be the one thing that will finally make me happy.”

12.  The quiltmaker thought for a moment.  “Make presents of everything you own,” she said, “and then I’ll make a quilt for you.  With each gift that you give, I’ll sew in another piece.  When at last all your things are gone, your quilt will be finished.”

13.  “Give away all my wonderful treasures?” cried the king!”  “I don’t give things away, I take them.”  And with that he ordered his soldiers to seize the beautiful star quilt from the quiltmaker. 

14.  But when they rushed upon her, she tossed the quilt out the window, and a great gust of wind carried it up, up and away.

15.  The king was now very angry.  He marched the woman down through town and up another mountain.

16.  He ordered the quiltmaker chained to a rock in the cave of a sleeping bear.  Once more the king asked her for a quilt, and once more the quiltmaker refused.  “Very well then,” the king replied.  “I’ll leave you here.  And when the bear awakens, I’m sure he will make a very fine breakfast of you.

17.  The bear slept on and on.  When he did open his eyes and see the woman in his cave, he stood on his mighty hind legs and gave a roar that rattled her bones.  She looked up at him and sadly shook her head.  “It’s no wonder you’re so grouchy,” the quiltmaker said.  “You’ve nothing but rocks on which to rest your head at night.”

18.  “Bring me an armful of pine needles and with my shawl, I’ll make you a great big pillow.”  And that is what she did. 

19.  No one had ever been so kind to the bear before.  So he broke the king’s chains and asked the quiltmaker to spend the night.  Now although the king was very good at being greedy, he was very bad at being mean.  All that night he could not sleep for thinking about the poor woman in the cave.  “Oh my, oh my, what have I done?” he wailed.  So he woke up his soldiers and they all marched in their pajamas up to the cave to save her.

20.  But when they arrived, the king found the quiltmaker and the bear having a breakfast of berries and honey.  “I give up!” the king shouted.  “What must I do for you to give me a quilt?”

21. As I said, the woman answered, “give away all of the things you own and I’ll sew a quilt for you.  And with each gift that you give, I’ll add another piece to your quilt.”’  “I can’t do that!” cried the king, “I love all my wonderful, beautiful things.”  “But if they don’t make you happy,” the woman replied, “what good are they?”  “That’s true,” the king sighed.  And he thought about what she had said for a long, long time.  So long that weeks went by.  “Oh, all right,” he finally muttered, “if I must give away my treasures, then I must!”

22.  The king went to his castle and searched from top to bottom for something he could bear to give away.  Frowning, he finally came out with a single marble.  But the boy who received it smiled so brightly in return, the king went back for more things.

23.  Eventually, he brought out a pile of velvet coats and went about the town, giving them to people dressed only in rags.

24.  All were so pleased that they marched up and down the street in a grand parade.  Still, the king did not smile.

25.  Then the king ordered his merry-go-round with the real horses to be brought out.  Children cried with delight and cartwheeled around him.  And just the smallest of smiles began to show on the king’s face.

26.  The king looked about him and saw the dancing and merrymaking and all the happiness his gifts had brought.  A child took hold of his hand and pulled him into the dance.  Now the king really smiled and even laughed out loud.  “How can this be?” he cried.  “How can I feel so happy about giving my things away?  Bring everything out!           Bring it all out at once!” 

27.  Meanwhile, the quiltmaker kept her word and started making a special quilt for the king.  With each gift that he gave, she added another piece to his quilt.

28.  So the king kept on giving and giving.  When there was no one left in town who had not received something, the king decided to go out into the world and find others who might be in need of his gifts.  Morning, noon, and night, the wagons rolled out of town, each piled high with the king’s wonderful things.  The king emptied his wagons, trading his treasures for smiles around the world.

29.  As the quiltmaker worked, piece by piece the king’s quilt grew more and more beautiful.  Finally, one day she put a final stitch in the quilt and started down the mountain in search of the king.

30.  After a long search, she found him.  The king’s royal clothes were in tatters and his toes poked out of his boots.  But his eyes glittered with joy and his laugh was wonderful and thunderous.

31.  The quiltmaker unfolded the king’s quilt from her bag.  It was so beautiful that hummingbirds and butterflies fluttered about.  Standing on tiptoe, she tenderly wrapped it around him.  “What’s this?” cried the king.  “As I promised you long ago,” the woman said, “when the day came that you, yourself, were poor, only then would I give you a quilt.”  The king’s great sunny laugh made green apples fall and flowers turn his way.  “But I am not poor,” he said.  “I may look poor, but in truth my heart is full to bursting, filled with memories of all the happiness I’ve given and received;  I’m the richest man I know.”  “Nevertheless,” the quiltmaker said, “I made this quilt just for you.”

32.  “Thank you,” replied the king.  “I’ll take it, but only if you’ll accept a gift from me.  There is one last treasure I have left to give away.  All these years I’ve saved it just for you.”  And from his rickety, rundown wagon the king brought out his throne.  “It’s really quite comfortable,” the king said.  “And just the thing for long days of sewing.”

33.  From that day on the king often came to the quiltmaker’s house in the clouds.  By day the quiltmaker sewed the beautiful quilts she would not sell.

34.  And at night the king took them down to the town.  There he searched out the poor and downhearted, never happier than when he was giving something away.

35.  The end

Message:  This summer during those long flights of my Sabbatical pilgrimage to Transylvania and visits to our exchange students in their home countries, I had opportunity to dig into this text by Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Parker, Saving Paradise.  From seeing stained glass windows and frescoes of early Christian art, they knew that many Christians emphasized earthly paradise rather than crucifixion and other-worldly heaven.  Studying early church art and writings, they discovered that this emphasis upon earthly paradise was the orthodox Christian theology until the 9^th to the 13^th centuries when crucifixion-centered salvation pushed it into a distant afterlife.

In the history of Christianity, Saxon artists of the tenth century carved the first life-sized, three-dimensional Crucifixions.  In the ninth century, their forebears had been forced by Charlemagne’s soldiers to be baptized at the point of a sword.  So Christianity came to them accompanied by death.  Today, the oldest crucifix to survive is the Gero Cross dated around 965 CE and located in the Cathedral of St. Peter and Maria in Cologne, Germany. 

Paradise—earthly paradise no longer seems noteworthy as Christianity has turned to the violent stories of bloody crucifixion, imperial judgment and threat of eternal hell fire. Even so, paradise can be found in quiet recesses of Western culture. 

36.  This week I received this poster entitled “Tree of Life: For the Healing of the Nations” from an international peace organization that advocates for non-violent and just resolution of Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  The fruiting olive tree, soil, sun and water, animals, mother and child offer the hope of earthly abundance and peace.

I recall seeing stained glass windows in Christian churches depicting a paradise of animals, deer, birds and rabbits, fields of golden wheat, fruiting trees alongside running water.  But the presumed inevitability of violence on earth has won our imaginations.  Modern depictions of paradise are so unbelievable that they can only be imagined in a distant afterlife, not on earth.

37.  This stained glass Paradise in Boston’s Church of Christ Science shows a garden of nonviolence: wolf and lamb, leopard and goat lying down together, a lion and child together.  This could only be imagined in an other-worldly heaven.

38.  You may be familiar with this picture from the first half of the nineteenth century entitled “Peaceable Kingdom.”  The artist Edward Hicks was an itinerant Quaker minister, and in the background he depicts a peaceful meeting of Quaker men with Indian men and Quaker women with Indian women.  But the foreground of farm animals and children playing with wolf, leopard, tiger and lion—an other-worldly image.

39. It seems that without an imagination of a real, possible earthly paradise, we modern people become endlessly aggressive to control or destroy any part of our natural world that does not bend to our will.  We have lost faith in a peaceful, earthly paradise.

“And in despair I bowed by head: `There is no peace on earth,’ I said, `for hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, to all good-will.’” Lyrics Unitarian Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Yet, we know that for all the animalistic violence in our evolutionary brains, we are also hard-wired for compassion, for relationships of mutual support and trust.  Every year at this season with its holidays of lights, we sing—and please understand the translation I offer—we sing:“Then pealed the bells more loud and deep, `Love is not dead, nor doth love sleep; the wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on earth, to all goodwill.”

On National Public Radio this week, All Things Considered aired a report of a surge of new, young farmers who are also devoted to organic, local food.  Our daughter with her college degree in International Studies, is one of them.  Fourteen years before Katrina was born, Joni Mitchell sang “Big Yellow Taxi”:  “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone; they paved paradise, put up a parking lot.”  My generation eliminated the small farm of our grandparents’ generation, and we have moved into the computer-age, paving paradise to haul in our food from thousands of miles away. 

Yes, I think it’s crazy to embrace the economic insecurity of farming.  But I remember what I was doing at Katrina’s age.  I was even more crazy to be studying philosophy—and I don’t regret it for a minute.  I needed to step back and ask, is this paved pathway all there is? 

We learned a helpful analysis at Leadership School last year.  Ashleigh shared this with our Board.   There seem to be three angles of focus:  attention to tasks, strategy and values.  Some of us are really good at doing tasks; we don’t want you to distract us with constant strategizing.  Others are so absorbed with strategizing that, if left alone, they would never get any tasks started.  It takes both of these roles for a family or a committee or a board to function. 

And still, there is something else necessary for healthy functioning.  Those new, young farmers are motivated by that third thing.  Values.  Getting food is an important task.  Strategizing to stretch your dollars is important too.  Then comes the question of values.  Am I willing to change my habits and even my efficient strategies in order to live my values.  Katrina says:  Consider your dollars to be your votes.  Vote for the food you consider best, even if it is more expensive and you can only afford to buy and eat less.  Step off the pavement and invest in paradise.

This holiday season, economists remind us that austerity, miserliness and greed are not the pathway to healthy economics, neither in ones private sphere nor in the international economy.  This season of gratitude and generosity is a time to vote our values with our money. 

The English Unitarian Charles Dickens wrote a marvelous tale about Ebenezer Scrooge and about joy available to any who dare to invest our time, our energy and our material resources in others’ lives. 

What do you find worth investing you money in?  If each dollar is a vote, what will get your votes this holiday season?  Our young people are teaching us:  Step off the pavement and invest in the earthly paradise you long for.

“Stand” by Amy Carol Web

I will stand with you — Will you stand with me
We will be the change – That we hope to see
In the name of love – In the name of peace
Will you stand, will you stand with me   (chorus)

When injustice raises up its fist
And fights to stop us in our tracks
We will rise and as one resist
No fear nor sorrow can turn us back

When pain and hatred churn up angry noise
And try to shout down our freedom song

We will rise in one joyful voice
Loud and clear and ever strong

When broken hearts come knocking on our door
Lost and hungry and so alone
We will reach as we have reached before
For there is no stranger in this our home

Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Emerald Coast
“Broken and Whole”
Rev. Rod Debs
November 13, 2011

Story for All Ages   Did you ever break a plate or one of your parents’ favorite dishes?  There is a village in China where they make big, beautiful vases.  And then they smash them!  Really!  The vases are some of the most expensive in the world because the pieces are all glued back together with a really strong material that makes the vases stronger and more beautiful than before they were broken.

“The Cracked Pot” is an Islamic story also told in India and China.  A lady had two water pots that she carried on the ends of a pole across her shoulders.  She had to walk a long way to get water for her home, for cooking and washing.  She would walk all the way to get the water, fill the pots, and then carry them all the way home. 

One of the pots was cracked and leaked water all the way.  The cracked pot felt bad because it was only half full when it got home.  It felt like a real failure, a loser because it couldn’t be like the other pot that was completely full when it got home. 

The cracked pot told the lady that she should throw it away and get another pot that wasn’t cracked.  But the lady told the cracked pot she needed the cracked pot.  Every day she carried water, the cracked pot dripped all along one side of the path.  The other side of the path was dry.  And all along the path on the side where water dripped from the cracked pot, beautiful flowers grew.

The lady was able to live by selling flowers at the market, flowers that the cracked pot watered every day.  Without the cracked pot, she would not have had flowers to sell.  To her, the cracked pot was very useful and very beautiful.  That’s the end of the story.

The moral of the stories:  Sometimes people are broken and become stronger when they are pulled back together with a little help from their friends.  At other times, people are able to do special things in the world because they are cracked or broken in some way. 

Even if someone is called a “crack-pot” and has some strange habit like spilling water along the path, they just might have something great to contribute to the world.  Even “The Cracked Pot” might have something valuable to give.

Message  On this Veterans’ Day weekend, I am reminded of the services provided by teachers and medical workers, by artisans and business people, all contributing to the health of our nation and its people.  Yet today, we wish to honor those who have served our country in the uniformed services, vowing to defend the United States Constitution under orders of our nation’s Commander in Chief, come what may. 

At this time, would veterans of United States uniformed services please stand and remain standing.  Recognizing that they also serve who stand and wait, would the families of those in United States uniformed services also stand and be recognized.  We honor your service to our nation.  Thank you.

I am reminded of Blake Farley who is currently stationed with his family in the Republic of Georgia.  A number of years ago, when Blake and Lisa were here and Hannah was four or five, and I remember that Hannah said, “Everyone loves me here” – at the Fellowship.  “They all treat me like I’m their child!”  I believe she meant that all the adults here treated her with sweet regard and protectiveness.

You can be sure that Hannah had her moments, like every little kid.  Even if you’re one of the lucky ones whose parents bless your life with kindness and help you with school work, you are bound to make mistakes and be corrected for your errors.  Among those who are used to getting A’s, for some a C or even a B is quite upsetting.  They are so used to sunshine gold stars, that a B brings them to tears.

I got lots of B’s and an occasional C, and I felt like I was constantly falling short of the mark of perfection.  Imagine how kids whose grades hover at C and lower feel, especially if their parents don’t have money for the right kinds of jeans, a nice home or car.  Some kids get used to being graded down with D’s and F’s and being judged bad. Kids and adults internalize negative judgments. We judge ourselves and sometimes withdraw before others can shame us.  We quit the team, quit school, quit trying to be nice or good.  From internalized negative reinforcement I learned to watch sports, and not to play them.

Wes Jackson of the Land Institute up in Minnesota, writes about planting wild annual seedlings in a greenhouse.  Watered, fertilized, warm, they produce a luxurious green growth. But put them outside for Minnesota weather and the shock kills them.  Jackson writes, “There is a way to gradually prepare greenhouse plants for a full life outside.  It is called `hardening off.’  By placing the plants outside a few hours a day at the beginning and gradually increasing the amount of time they are left outside, eventually they can be safely left there…. We know that if we jump too quickly into the world of the future, we might become so discouraged that we refuse to venture out again.  We hope that one day we may regard being whipped by the wind as being touched by the earth, rather than threatened with wilt, but that can happen only if we have been properly `hardened off.’”  (The Land Report, #1, December, 1976)

Failing grades can become internalized in a child or in an adult when we come to think of ourselves as stupid, a loser, and we die inside.  Without kind regard and support, failures can wreak havoc on our courage to keep making mistakes and to grow. 

The Universalist concept of God involves universal acceptance or grace toward all people and in all our flawed conditions.  Philip Yancey writes in his book, What’s So Amazing About Grace?, “There is nothing we can do that will make God love us more.  There is nothing we can do that will make God love us less.”  His website bio reads:  “Growing up in a strict, fundamentalist church in the southern USA, a young Philip Yancey tended to view God as `a scowling Supercop, searching for anyone who might be having a good time—in order to squash them.’”  However, a God of grace offers humankind universal acceptance, so we need not be afraid to be imperfect. 

On the other side, speaking of Satan, Meg Barnhouse writes:  “`Satan,’ in the Hebrew, means `the accuser.’… that voice inside most of us that whispers, `You are not quite adequate.  You’re a weak specimen, a broken reed, a slight disappointment to your mother and father.  You have a shameful laziness, and you might be a touch stupid.’”  (Broken Buddha, p.27-28)

Satan’s voice in your head is a lot different from the love that Hannah felt here at the fellowship.  Our Unitarian Universalist covenant with our children and with one another does not demand perfection nor judge one another’s weaknesses harshly.  Although we Unitarian Universalists may have a proclivity to what’s called “critical thinking” about ideas, hunting for flaws in our own and in others’ understandings of the world, our covenant promise is to honor one another as having inherent worth, and we promise to promote and affirm one another’s integrity, one another’s right of conscience as if we all have the right to our own flaws and even flawed beliefs without ridicule or shaming.

In her book Broken Buddha, Meg Barnhouse writes about a Buddha statue with its hand broken and lying on its foot!  Meg writes: “Maybe you can be enlightened and broken too.” 

When I think of the people who have inspired and strengthened my life, none have been flawless.  I think of the Buddhist monk Ajahn Sumedho.  His writings that have been most liberating to me have been accounts of his bumblings and his lessons learned.  I think of quiet Quakers who bore witness by their compassionate actions and with few words. 

As we prepare to host a Cold Night Shelter here on Wednesday nights beginning in December, I think of William Ellery Channing, the spiritual leader of American Unitarianism.  Channing was grasped by respect for all condition of fellow-humans from his experience with slaves and the working poor.  In 1838, he said:

“Let us not disparage that nature which is common to all….  Through the vulgar error of undervaluing what is common, we are apt indeed to pass these by as of little worth…. The multitude of (persons)… make little noise and draw little notice in their narrow spheres of action; but still they have their full proportion of personal worth and even of greatness…. He who possesses the divine powers of the soul is a great being, be his place what it may. You may clothe him with rags, may immure him in a dungeon, may chain him to slavish tasks.  But he is still great…. It is only our own diseased sight which makes him little….”

It’s so easy to judge ourselves and others.  Our brains draw attention to dangers and to short-comings that threaten our lives or livelihood.  We do not focus on the mundane, healthy-and-flawed living of our lives.  Our judging, fearful minds are not on guard for what is going well.  It’s busy pointing out flaws, dangers.

Before we can reach out in compassion to the world, Karen Armstrong suggests in Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life, we need to practice compassion for ourselves.  She writes:  “Notice how much peace, happiness and benevolence you possess already.  Make yourself aware of how much you need and long for loving friendship.  Next, become conscious of your anger, fear, and anxiety…. Bring to mind some of your past suffering…. Try gently to put aside your current irritations, frustrations, and worries and feel compassion (karuna) for your conflicted, struggling self. Then bring your capacity for joy (mudita) to the surface and take conscious pleasure in things we all tend to take for granted:  good health, family, friends, work, and life’s tiny pleasures.  Finally, look at yourself with (evenmindedness).  You are not unique.  You have failings, but so does everybody else.  You also have talents and, like every other being on the planet, you deserve compassion, joy, and friendship.” 

Is it possible for us to learn to love ourselves in our brokenness as whole and worthy?  Is it possible for us to learn to love others in their brokenness as whole and worthy?   Meg Barnhouse suggests we try it just every other day, judging and criticizing ourselves and others only every other day.  She writes:

“Maybe I could get really good at loving the world just every other day.  Maybe on that day I could love myself as well.  Just every other day, let go of self-improvement and challenging other people’s mistakes.  I invite you to think about doing this, too.  Every other day, maybe we could let go of wondering if we are good enough, of wondering if we are doing it right.  Every other day rest, if we can, in the warm animal pleasures of wind, water, food, earth, friends, love, and beauty.  Every other day put in abeyance the drive to feel that we are smart enough, thin enough, cool enough, doing enough…. So, on alternate days… we can sharpen our intellectual claws in ourselves and (on) one another with edgy glee.”

I don’t know.  Maybe the world is too dangerous and we are too evil to set aside our fear, to stop harshly judging ourselves and others—even every other day.  Meg Barnhouse puts the choice to us simply:      “Love is always in dialogue     with fear      in our spirits      and bodies         and minds.         Let love win.”

Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Emerald Coast
“Hands-On Wholeness”
Rev. Rod Debs
October 30, 2011

Story for All Ages   “Scary Healers”

If somebody in your family gets sick, what do you do?  (doctor, hospital, medicine)

What if there were no doctors or hospitals in the world?  Then what would you do?

     Would you go to your mom or grandmother or another wise old woman?

In the Roman world many hundreds of years ago, there were no doctors or hospitals or drug stores where you could get medicine when you were sick.  When someone got sick, people would ask the old women if they knew anything they could do to get better. 

Women took care of children when they were young.  Women would grow vegetables and gather wild plants to cook and eat.  And when anyone got sick, it was women’s work to take care of them. 

So after years and years of gathering plants for food and trying to heal sick, old women learned that sometimes you should drink a lot of clean water when you have certain sickness, or maybe drink hot tea made with the leaves of certain plants, or maybe eat garlic or some other herb or flower or healing plant when you are sick.  These women came to be known as healers, especially those who had lived to be very old and experienced.

Witches are usually thought to be old and ugly, right?  People didn’t used to live very long, so if a man or woman did grow old, they probably had lost teeth and had pox marks all over their faces from surviving a disease called smallpox.  Men had the advantage that their beards hid their old faces.  But old women looked scary when everyone else alive was under thirty years old!

Witches are usually thought to be scary, right?  Whenever lots of people got sick (an epidemic) or when crops didn’t grow, whenever accidents happened or any other tragedy, people didn’t know why these bad things happened.  They thought someone was to blame.  So they would blame anyone they didn’t like.  They would blame scary people for whatever bad things happened.

Scary old women healers were called “witches” and often blamed for causing bad things to happen.  People said witches had put evil spells of crops or animals or on whoever had something bad happen to them.  No one could prove that the healers caused bad things.  But scary-looking old women healer witches were punished, even killed—just because they were old and ugly and knew so many amazing healing herbs and remedies. 

So at Halloween, I think of witches as wise old women healers.  I am very grateful for what witches taught us about herbs and remedies, witches’ brews that we now call medicines.  Thanks to these scary healers!

Message   Fifteen years ago, the University of Northern Iowa held—believe it or not—a Religious Arts Career Day for students.  Quite a number of professors there were in the UU congregation, so I set up a UU table with a bunch of brochures about our religious movement.

Among the students that stopped by for conversation, one student inquired, “What is salvation for Unitarian Universalists?”  I couldn’t think of what to say.  We don’t always use traditional religious language like `salvation’ and `faith’ and the like.  I went home and stewed over it.  I came up with a tentative UU definition of `salvation’ which might be said to be the goal of our religious community:  wholeness.  Once I looked for it, I found that the concept of “wholeness” is not new to our faith.

As you arrived this morning, you could see a few Halloween decorations from the Coffee House held here last night.  Adults as well as kids love to dress up and play with caricatures of our fears at Halloween.  In fact, one of the most influential of nineteenth century Americans, the literary giant Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote a serious piece about amputated parts of the human body strutting about like so many monsters.  So let’s begin with these words by Ralph Waldo Emerson about wholeness and about monsters:

“Just as the hand was divided into fingers,
the better to answer its end…,
you must take the whole society
to find the whole (hu)man….
Members have suffered amputation from the trunk
And strut about so many walking monsters,
–a good finger, a neck, a stomack (sic), an elbow,
but never a (hu)man….
Cheered by the true dignity of his ministry.”

Emerson said that “you must take the whole society to find the whole (hu)man.”  Human wholeness involves something more than isolated individuals “amputated” from community.  Individuals who “strut about so many walking monsters” are “never a (hu)man…. Cheered by the true dignity of his ministry” within society.

When I speak with individuals who are unemployed or individuals separated from their families by death or by divorce or empty nests as kids leave home, they do often seem to be “amputated” from their former wholeness.  As “amputated” individuals, they are no longer “cheered by the true dignity of (their) ministry.” 

At a critical juncture between youth and adulthood, young people go through this transition, trying to find their place as a productive member of society once they are “cut off” from their student role.  Retirees sometimes experience the same sense of “amputation” from their productive place in society.  We know what it feels like to be unconnected, yet as a culture we cling tightly to the notion of being independent individuals.  Albert Einstein wrote:

“A human being is a part of the whole that we call the universe, a part limited in time and space.  He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest–a kind of optical illusion of his consciousness.  This illusion is a prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for only the few people nearest us.  Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living beings and all of nature.”

In her book, Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life, Karen Armstrong offers practical steps that help us become more whole.  Her third step is “Compassion for Yourself.” 

Drawing from the Buddha’s meditation on Four Immeasurable Minds: Friendship (maître), Compassion (karuna), Joy (mudita), and Even-Mindedness (upeksha), Armstrong directs us to extend Friendship first toward ourselves:  reflect upon the good, happiness and benevolence, all the good that you often take for granted about yourself.  List your gifts and goodness.

Second, reflect upon the suffering you experience and the unhappy, less noble—even the bad that you know about yourself.

Third, reflect upon the joy and pleasures of life, including those you take for granted.

Fourth and finally, reflect upon how others are like you as you meditate on Friendship, Compassion, and Joy.  “You are not unique.  You have failings, but so does everybody else.  You also have talents and, like every other being on the planet, you deserve compassion, joy, and friendship” (Karen Armstrong, p.86).  This is Even-Mindedness.

Armstrong writes, “It is only in the context of a kinder attitude toward ourselves that we can consider the importance of transcending the ego.”  When the Dalai Lama called for a spiritual revolution at the turn of the millennium, he was calling for this fourth of the Four Immeasurable Minds:  Even-Mindedness, a reorientation away from our habitual preoccupation with self.

One of the reasons I like Karen Armstrong’s work is that she uses current brain science as well as ancient religious and secular traditions to identify their common core of wisdom.  In the evolution of the human brain, the more ancient brain structures that seem more animalistic are indeed preoccupied with individual survival.  We call them the Four Fs:  Out of fear we mindlessly react with Fight or Flight responses:  rage, violence, lying, sacrificing others, fleeing.  These animalistic responses, Buddhists would say, are not who we are.

Out of hunger and desire for comfort, our mindless animalistic response is to Feed, to consume and to hoard useful stuff as well as food.  Out of sexual drives, our bodies respond to visual and other sensual cues.  I grew up with the religious explanation that “the devil made me do it” or that my “fallen, carnal” nature was inherently sinful. 

But Buddhists would say that our animalistic self-preoccupation with the Four Fs are not who we are.  The doctrine of “no-self” (anatta) is a reflection that as animals, all of us have these preoccupations with selfish desires.  But this is not who we are as humans, whole humans.

The Spiritual Revolution to transcend the animalistic, Four Fs preoccupation with self, is an agenda of major world religions from Confucianism and Daoism to Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, to Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Ba’hai to Western philosophical rationalism.  At the core of each is self-transcending Compassion, The Golden Rule.

Unlike propositional Western philosophical traditions which have greatly influenced Western religious traditions as well, Compassion “is not a notional doctrine that you either agree with or make yourself believe.  It is a method—and the only adequate test of any method is to put it into practice.”

Armstrong uses the Twelve-Step approach because Compassion is not so much a belief as it is a call to establish new habits of thought and action.  She suggests that we begin by doing one action a day wherein we exercise  the positive version of The Golden Rule:  Once each day “Treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself.”

Second, she suggests doing one action a day implementing the negative version of The Golden Rule:  “Do not do to others what you would not like them to do to you.” Try to catch yourself before you make a wounding remark or other hurtful action.

Third, Armstrong suggest, once a day try to reverse a negative thought pattern into a more kindly direction toward yourself or others.  From these modest steps, one starts on the road of compassionate action.

Armstrong writes, “We are not doomed to an existence of selfishness, because we have the ability, with disciplined, repetitive action, to construct new habits of thought, feeling, and behavior.  If every time we are tempted to say something vile about an annoying sibling, a colleague, an ex-husband, or a country with whom we are at war, we reflexively ask ourselves `How would I like this said about me and mine?’ and refrain, we will achieve ekstasis, a momentary `stepping outside’ the egotistically confined self.  If, as Confucius advised, we did this `all day and every day,’ we would be in a state of continuous ekstasis, which is not an exotic trance but the permanent selflessness of a Buddha or a sage.”

It is possible to break out of our preoccupation with self.  Compassion for others as for ourselves is at the core of major religious and humanistic traditions and of the world’s saints and sages.  But it is more than mere belief.  Compassion is behavior and habits of thought. 

Pema Chodron writes:  “We don’t set out to save the world. We set out to wonder how other people are doing and to reflect on how our actions affect other people’s hearts “ 

In Our Passion for Justice, Carter Heyward writes:  “Love, like truth and beauty, is concrete. Love is not fundamentally a sweet feeling; not, at heart, a matter of sentiment…. Love is active, effective, a matter of making reciprocal and mutually beneficial relation with one’s friends and enemies…. Love is a choice — not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but rather a willingness to be present to others without pretense or guile. Love is a conversion to humanity — a willingness to participate with others in the healing of a broken world and broken lives. Love is the choice to experience life as a member of the human family, a partner in the dance of life, rather than as an alien in the world or as a deity above the world, aloof and apart from human flesh.”

Love is a choice, a conversion to humanity.  When the prophets of greed and privilege tell us that our human nature is selfish and violent, and that the nature of human community is “each against all,” we can say that the cage of selfish animalism is not who we are.

Albert Camus wrote:  “There is beauty and there are the humiliated.
Whatever difficulties the enterprise may present,
I would like never to be unfaithful to the one or the other.”

This, I think, is what it means to be human.

One of the young radicals at the dawn of American Unitarianism, Theodore Parker (1810-1860) wrote:  “May we join the human race in daring to live in the prophetic spirit…. May we have communities for the whole person:  truth for the mind, good works for the hands, love for the heart; and for the soul that aspiring after perfection, that unfaltering faith in life, which like lightning in the clouds, shines brightest when elsewhere it is most dark.”

I want to close with these words by Frederick Buechner:  “Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else’s skin.  It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.”  

Addendum:

“Hell is, in fact, a burning issue for it is the issue of separation, whether we can, with safety and impunity, set up little islands in the human experience and therefore protect ourselves against any relationship with the mainland.  And Universalism says unequivocally, it cannot be done.”    –Gordon B. McKeeman

 

 

Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Emerald Coast
“Trust”
Rev. Rod Debs
October 16, 2011 

Story for All Ages   “The Shepherd Who Cried Wolf”

Do you like to go to your friends’ houses to play?

When you go to play with your friends or when they come to play at your house, do you write down a lot of rules before you play, like: 

- We promise not to kick each other in the head or in the legs or in the stomach.

- We promise not to stomp on each other’s feet or hands

- We promise not to poke each other in the eyes.

- We promise not to hit each other in the head or in the stomach or in the back.

- We promise not to break things on purpose.

You don’t make these promises?  You don’t make any rules like these? 

Without any promises or any rules, when you go visit your friends do you kick and stomp and poke and hit and break things? 

Do you make no rules or promises because you think it’s OK that your friends do these things to you?

Maybe you don’t have to make promises and write rules down, because you trust one another not to do these things.

If you are pretty sure someone is not going to do things you don’t want them to do, you say that you “trust” them. 

They can say they trust you too if you are trustworthy and don’t to things they don’t want you to do to them.

Once upon a time there was a little boy named George who lived with his family in a farming village.  Since he was young, he did not have to do the hard work like everyone else.  His job was easy–to take the family’s sheep out to the fields where they could eat and drink from streams, and to bring them home safe every day.

Every day he played with the sheep and lambs in the green meadows.  It was beautiful outdoors with fields of grass and flowers, birds and butterflies, clouds and sunshine and rain.  The sheep and lambs were fun to watch and to play with.

In those days, children didn’t get to go to school to learn from books and teachers.  Being outside in nature with the sheep was great, but George wished he could be back in the village and play with other children.

So George had an idea.  He started to shout, “Wolf!  Wolf!  Wolf!  Wolf!”  And everyone in the village stopped working.  They grabbed their tools and ran to the field to help him fight off the wolves who were attacking the sheep.  But there were no wolves. 

“Where are the wolves?” they asked.  “They ran away when I shouted,” George lied.  It was fun to see all the kids and adults come running!  Then everyone left.

Every day George took the sheep to the meadows, and every day he remembered how excited everyone got when he cried “Wolf.”  So he tried it again.

On one very normal day, he started to wave his arms wildly and shout, “Wolf!  Wolf!  Wolf!”  And sure enough, everyone in the village grabbed their tools and came running to protect the sheep from a pack of hungry wolves.  But, again, there were no wolves.  George told them that he had scared the wolves away by waving his arms and shouting.

So George had it all figured out.  Whenever he wanted some excitement, all he had to do was to wave his arms, shout “Wolf,” and everyone in the village would come running to wherever he had the sheep.

Then one day, a pack of wolves came down from the mountains hunting for food.  They saw the flock of sheep and raced toward them snarling and scattering all the sheep.   George waved his arms and shouted, “Wolf!  Wolf!  Wolf!  Wolf!”  But nobody stopped working.  No one trusted that George was telling the truth.  No one came to help protect the sheep, and so the wolves killed many of the sheep– a really bad thing.

To be trusted means that you do what’s right even when no one is watching.    

     People are more likely to want to be friends with you if they can trust you to do what’s right.  Some people say that the friendships you have when you are trustworthy are what is most important for a happy life.

Message:  One of the intriguing quotes we place outside on our “Wayside Pulpit” is from Southern Africa:  “Ubuntu:  I am because we are.”  Ubuntu expresses that we are not really separate and independent beings.  We are who we are as individuals because of the community in which we find ourselves.

Consider:  The Pando in Fishlake National Forest in South-central Utah is a single Quaking Aspen tree with each above-ground “tree-trunk” having identical genetic markers.  Its massive underground root system is estimated to be 6,600 tons.  It is the oldest known living organism at 80,000 years of age.  Unitarian Ralph Waldo Emerson who influenced our entire country with his essay “Self-Reliance” also spoke of our essential interconnectedness, like the Aspen tree, with hidden roots of oneness.

We humans don’t share identical genetics nor are we literally connected by a massive underground root system.  We move around.  We enjoy diversity including an ever-changing genetic diversity.  Yet we are connected as a species and within the eco-system in which we thrive.  We are part of the earth, one with the sun and stars from which we originated as stardust.

Rebecca Parker, President of Starr King School for the Ministry writes that “covenant means to come together.  More precisely, it means to come together by making a promise, as when two people promise to love and care for one another” (Blessing the World: What Can Save Us Now, 2006).  Couples come together in love.  Extended families come together with cross-generational loyalty.  Working groups come together in productive enterprises.  Communities come together to create infrastructure like roads and water and sewer and police and schools for the common good.  Religious communities “gather” ourselves in common purpose too. 

We may be deceived to think that we are unconnected individuals.  That we come together only by individually-restrictive promises, rules, creeds, written or unwritten expectations that are the artificial core unity of our various gatherings. 

But Rebecca Parker writes:  We are already connected to the world that created us:  “We receive who we are before we choose who we will become…. We are given the gift of life, the gift of the earth that sustains life, the gift of one another and of all the generations leading up to now…. Covenant making must begin with these questions: What have we been given?  What is the covenant we are already in?”

In 1644, one of our Puritan forebears, Richard Mather wrote of the covenant without words displayed by “constant and frequent acts of communion performed by a company of Saints joined together by cohabitation in towns and villages… the falling in of their spirits into communion in things spiritual”  (A.S.P. Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty, quoted by Rebecca Parker, Blessing the World). 

Dr. Parker writes: “What a lovely phrase: the falling in of their spirits into communion…. Our verbal promises are the frosting on the cake, not the cake itself.  They may help us keep the covenant we are in, but they are not the covenant itself.  By our acts… in a Unitarian Universalist congregation; structuring our life together to give room for the experience, voice, and vote of each person; and joining together to resist injustice, our spirits have fallen into communion.”

The communion we have fallen into has a history.  Here’s how Rebecca Parker articulates the history of our present-day communion:  “We’ve fallen into communion with the feisty, free-spirited Puritans of 450 years ago, who advocated freedom of religious conscience and resisted the oppressive powers of church and state.  We’ve fallen into communion with the people who believe revelation is not sealed…. We’ve fallen into communion with the sweet-spirited Universalists of old, who rejected a notion of God as a tyrant ruling by the threat of hell and named God as a gracious, creative presence who saves all through the power of love.  We’ve fallen into communion with the deep-feeling Transcendentalists, who insisted that religion cannot be found in the dry bones of the past but must be discovered firsthand.

“We’ve fallen into communion with the Iowa Sisterhood and all those who have advocated for the rights and full humanity of women.  We’ve fallen into communion with the all-embracing mystics who see truth manifest in the diverse religious traditions of earth’s people and mystery revealed in the trees and the stars.  And we’ve fallen into communion with courageous Humanists who dare to lift up the dignity and strength of human beings, the power and importance of critical reason, in a world that prefers the abrogation of human agency and uncritical obedience to false gods.”

We have fallen into this communion with the history that shapes us.  As the hymn by Brian Wren goes:  “We are not our own, / Earth forms us, / Human leaves on nature’s growing vine, / Fruit of many generations, / Seeds of life divine.”  We have fallen into this communion of history and of hope.

Parker writes:  “Fundamentally, covenant is not a verbal agreement but a practice.  It is formed by coming together in peace and committing ourselves as coworkers with the source of life.”  She points to The Cambridge Platform of 1648, which defined how our early American, covenant congregations gathered.  It reads in part:  “Real agreement and consent they do express by their constant practice in coming together for the public worship of God, and by their religious subjection unto the ordinances of God… not only by word of mouth, but by sacrifice… and also, sometimes, by silent consent, without any writing or expression of words at all.”  In the text, the only word emphasized was the word `practice’: “Real agreement and consent they do express by their constant practice….”

Today, so much is made of words, of rules and creeds we say we believe and follow.  Everyone wants to know what you believe, and they are concerned if you don’t say the right words.  Perhaps it is the church’s healthy intention to avoid judging one another’s actual behavior that we focus on the beliefs and rules we aspire to follow.  Theologians would call it “cheap grace”:  salvation by mere beliefs rather than by real behavior.

For us as well, it’s one thing to affirm our Unitarian Universalist Statement of Principles, which end with the words:  “As free congregations we enter into this covenant, promising to one another our mutual trust and support.”  It’s another thing that we “fall into communion” with one another with behaviors of mutual trust and support.

H.L. Mencken wrote:  “For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe. Marriage is a scheme to accomplish exactly that same end.”

People everywhere need the communion of mutual trust and support.  We are falling into communion everywhere, all the time.  Yet, we have allowed ourselves to be convinced that we are by nature separate, selfish individuals and that our relationships are “each against all.”  Still we gather in cooperation.  We fall in love. 

Is it worth the effort?  To gather?  In communion?  In mutual trust and support?

Fiona Apple wrote:  “When you’re surrounded by all these people, it can be even lonelier than when you’re by yourself. You can be in a huge crowd, but if you don’t feel like you can trust anybody or talk to anybody, you feel like you’re really alone.”  

Graham Greene wrote:  “It is impossible to go through life without trust: that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.”  Do you know unhappy people like that?

Henry Stimson wrote:  “The only way you can make a (person) trustworthy is to trust him.”  May the falling of our spirits into Unitarian Universalist communion be a warm school of mutual trust and support, gently changing us, changing the world to be trustworthy.

Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Emerald Coast
“9-11 Patriot’s Day”
Rev. Rod Debs
September 11, 2011 

Story for All Ages  “The Duel” by Eugene Field

The gingham dog and the calico cat 
Side by side on the table sat; 
T’was half past twelve, and (what do you think!) 
Nor one nor t’other had slept a wink! 
The old Dutch clock and the Chinese plate 
Appeared to know as sure as fate 
There was going to be a terrible spat 
(I wasn’t there; I simply state 
What was told to me by the Chinese plate!)

The gingham dog went “Bow-wow-wow!” 
And the calico cat replied “Mee-ow!” 
The air was littered, an hour or so, 
With bits of gingham and calico, 
While the old Dutch clock in the chimney-place 
Up with its hands before its face, 
For it always dreaded a family row!

(Now mind: I’m only telling you 
What the old Dutch clock declares is true!) 
The Chinese plate looked very blue, 
And wailed, “Oh, dear! what shall we do!” 
But the gingham dog and the calico cat 
Wallowed this way and tumbled that, 
Employing every tooth and claw 
In the awfulest way you ever saw– 
And oh! How the gingham and calico flew! 
(Don’t fancy I exaggerate–I got my news from the Chinese plate!)

Next morning, where the two had sat 
They found no trace of dog or cat; 
And some folks think unto this day 
That burglars stole that pair away! 
But the truth about that cat and pup 
Is this: they ate each other up! 
Now what do you really think of that! 
(The old Dutch clock it told me so, 
And that is how I came to know.)

“Block City”  from A Child’s Garden of Verses, by Robert Louis Stevenson 

What are you able to build with your blocks?

Castles and palaces, temples and docks.

Rain may keep raining, and others go roam,

But I can be happy and building at home.

 

Let the sofa be mountains, the carpet be sea,

There I’ll establish a city for me:

A kirk and a mill and a palace beside,

And a harbor as well where my vessels may ride.

 

Great is the palace with pillar and wall,

A sort of a tower on the top of it all,

And steps coming down in an orderly way

To where my toy vessels lie safe in the bay.

 

This one is sailing and that one is moored:

Hark to the song of the sailors on board!

And see, on the steps of my palace, the kings

Coming and going with presents and things!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now I have done with it, down let it go!

All in a moment the town is laid low.

Block upon block lying scattered and free,

What is there left of my town by the sea?

 

Yet as I saw it, I see it again,

The kirk and the palace, the ships and the men

And as long as I live and where’er I may be,

I’ll always remember my town by the sea. 

Message   Patriotism.  War.  Football.  National Public Radio’s Garrison Keillor often gently roasts Unitarian Universalists in his stories on his radio show Prairie Home Companion. Two years ago, Garrison told a story, a story about a football game between Gethsemane Seminary and UUUU, the Unitarian Universalist United University.  They played the piece again this weekend.  It is cute. 

As he told the story, Garrison said:  “Unitarians aren’t exactly a football powerhouse… They don’t care about football at all.  They don’t even bother to work up plays.  They just stand around arguing in the huddle and then they go and run off in all directions.” 

Describing the UUUU football team, Keillor said:  “They looked slender and gentle like soft tendrils.  There wasn’t much killer instinct there.  The tackling dummies had flowers wrapped around them.”  Addressing the team, he said:  “Look—you’ve got a big game next week against Gethsemane Seminary.  Ever hear the word `Win’?  These fundamentalists have been eating your lunch for years and it’s time you hit ‘em hard and get out there and fight for moderation and freedom of inquiry and rip their arms off and beat ‘em over the head with ‘em.” 

One of the UUUU player responds, “Is this going to involve violence?” 

Keillor continues:  “I drove away sure of one thing—there was no powerful will to win among the Unitarians.  Their team was just out to have an interesting football experience and then a post-game discussion….” 

But from the Gethsemane Seminary team, we heard:  “Ever hear the word `win’?  It means to pummel, punish, destroy, flail, smash, mash, bomb, pound, spear, lance, flog, trammel, steamroll, nuke, whip, trounce, tromp, humiliate, beat, bash, crush, kill, and spank.” 

While from the UUUU sideline we heard:  “Give me a U—if you want to!  Give me another U—if you’re comfortable with that!  Give me another U—unless you have to get going!  Give me another U—as long as it’s approved by committee!”  UUUU fans were singing:  “We shall perhaps overcome / But if we don’t it’s okay / We will still feel we’ve overcome / Even if we lose.”  Ouch!  

I left out the comments about women, transgender and being sissies.  Such roasts on National Public Radio are probably good because Keillor presents UUs as totally unembarrassed by our welcome of women, glbtq persons, pacifists, humanists and “cake-eating liberals”—a comment about our class privilege.  It’s public exposure.  That we exist and are doing what we can to make a better world. 

I’m amazed that most people I meet, including my fundamentalist friends and acquaintances, are respectful.  Even when they know my social justice commitments.  It was a UU asked me, “Why do you hate America?”  Like asking someone, “When did you stop beating your wife?”  It is a hateful question that includes the prejudgment that something I say or do unquestionably shows a lack of patriotic love for your country.  You hate America.  Now explain yourself. 

This is sophisticated—and let me say—fascist rhetoric.  The Nazi Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering stated while incarcerated during the Nuremberg trials:  “Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, 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 tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.“ 

If you want war, denounce opponents for lack of patriotism.  

President Dwight Eisenhower disagreed with such attacks on the patriotism of those who dissent from popular views.  He said: ”Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels – men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.”   

Today, September 11 has been designated by Congress and signed into law by our President as Patriot Day.  If patriotism is not war fever against other nations, if patriotism is not, “My country, right or wrong,” what is patriotism? 

In discussing whether or not to fly the Earth flag and the United States flag prominently outside, one opinion I heard was that to fly one flag in exclusion of all other national flags communicates lesser value toward all other nations and peoples.  As Universalists, we would not want to communicate anything less than universal compassion and respect for all people of every nation.  How can we communicate our Universalist values? 

I think that Hymn # 159 begins to answer this question.  The hymn articulates a healthy patriotism without suggesting anything less than global solidarity with people of all lands and all nations. 

 

This is my song, O God of all the nations,

a song of peace for lands afar and mine.

This is my home, the country where my heart is;

here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine;

But other hearts in other lands are beating

with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

 

My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,

and sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine;

but other lands have sunlight too, and clover,

and skies are everywhere as blue as mine.

O hear my song, thou God of all the nations,

a song of peace for their land and for mine. 

I think this hymn communicates Unitarian Universalist patriotism.  It is an expression of deep, heartfelt commitment and love for the United States of America that does not preclude others from the same.  Because I love the children and families, the spacious skies and majestic mountains, rolling fields and teeming cities of my country, I can also feel and respect the same deep, heartfelt commitment and love that people of all nations have toward their countries.  The particularity of my patriotism does not pit me against all other nations and peoples.  The depth of my love for my country helps me have greater sense of other nations and peoples as worthy of mutual compassion and love. 

Martin Luther King Jr. was a critic of our nation’s injustices and of the evil of our War in Vietnam.  His patriotism was not at the expense of great compassion even for the people described as our enemies.  And Martin Luther King Jr. was one of our nation’s greatest patriots.  Here’s what he had to say about patriotism:

 “Patriotism is not only a legitimate sentiment, but a duty… We cannot more efficiently labor for the good of all… than by pledging heart, brain, and hands to the services of keeping our country true to its mission, obedient to its idea…

“Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation.”             

 

“Last Words on September 11, 2001”

Compiled by Sylvia Stocker  — Seminarian at Andover Newton Theological School; Candidate for UU Ministry

 

Narrator: On September 11, 2001, people in the towers and people in the planes telephoned their loved ones to impart one final message. Today we remember their last words…

The last words of an unnamed 24-year-old son to his mother, and his mother’s response…

Speaker One: Mom, the ceiling’s falling down. I’m going to die. I love you.

Speaker Two: Go and hold someone’s hand. Be with someone. I don’t want you to die alone.

Narrator: The last words of Lauren Grandcolas, aboard Flight 93, to her husband…

Speaker Three: We have been hijacked. They are being kind. I love you.

Narrator: The last words of Melissa Hughes, trapped in the World Trade Center, to her husband…

Speaker Four: Sean, it’s me. I just wanted you to know I love you and I’m stuck in this building in New York. A plane hit the building, or a bomb went off. We don’t know, but there’s a lot of smoke and I just wanted you to know that I love you always.

Narrator: The last words of Mark Bingham, hero aboard Flight 93 to his mother…

Speaker Five: I want you to know, I love you very much and am calling from the plane. We’ve been taken over. There are three men and they say they have a bomb. I don’t know who they are. I love you…, I love you…, I love you.

Narrator: The last words of countless men and women facing terrifying and violent death . . .

Speaker One: I love you.

Speaker Two I love you.

Speaker Three: I love you.

Narrator: And in the towers and on the Manhattan streets below, hundreds rushed into peril to save lives and put out the flames. Crushed in a mountain of debris, their last words remain mute. Today we remember them with these words of Walt Whitman.

“I am the mash’d fireman with breast-bone broken,
Tumbling walls buried me in their debris,
Heat and smoke I inspired, I heard the yelling shouts of my comrades,
I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels,
They have clear’d the beams away, they tenderly lift me forth.”

Narrator: Today we speak their last words for them . . . I love you.

Speaker Four: I love you.

Speaker Five: I love you.

Narrator: And let the people say:

Congregation:  I love you.

Here is the Podcast of Dennis Hale’s sermon from 6/5/2011:

Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Emerald Coast
“Easter:  Uncomfortable Courage”
Rev. Rod Debs
April 24, 2011

Back in 2001, in my seventh year of ministry at the Unitarian Universalist Society of Black Hawk County in Cedar Falls, Iowa, Jeannette and Katrina accompanied me on my Sabbatical to experience Theravada Buddhist life in Thailand.  For nine weeks we visited countless wats (Buddhist temples), hosted by the family of our former exchange student, Gift.  We visited several monasteries and met monks who talked to us about Buddhism.  Of the Buddhist books given us by the monks, this collection of teachings by Ajahn Sumedho entitled The Way It Is—, has been most helpful in removing obstacles to my Buddhist meditation.

The monks taught me that all the sutras, the countless teachings of Buddhism are not Buddhism.  Buddhism is, first and last, to meditate.  Although there are many ways to meditate, and we should follow whatever path works, Buddhists commonly speak of meditation as involving “breath awareness” (anapanasati) and “insight meditation” (vipassana).

The way that I experience Buddhist meditation is that I pay attention to my breathing.  I can be sitting, standing, walking or reclining while I pay attention to my breathing.  This is gloriously free time!  While I am meditating, I don’t have to think or do anything but breathe!  You can’t do it wrong!  Naturally, my mind begins to wander.  That is the second part of meditation, “insight meditation,” seeing “the way it is.”

My friend David described it this way.  You’re standing breathing at a train station, and a train—let’s call it worry about work “pulls into the station.”  You see the train pull in with all its cars and load of people and other stuff.  Sometimes you climb on that train. Practice just letting that train pull away without climbing on.  You practice “breathing awareness” as a calming practice.  You practice “insight meditation” when you observe what’s on that train — the way it is. Think of the meditation practice of Thich Nhat Hanh and his Buddhist monks in Vietnam during the war.  Sometimes it’s uncomfortable to practice breathing and not running off to do something that makes everything worse!

Buddhists do not practice meditating 24 hours a day.  But the calming meditation and the insight meditation they do practice everyday makes a difference in how they are able to observe their mind, how they develop an ability to calmly choose rather than simply react, jumping on the train of worry or passion or anger, disappointment, judgment or cruelty or any of those other human reactions that are our evolutionary heritage.  Buddhists practice mindfulness, and when they are not practicing their meditation, mindfulness seeps over into how they are able to calmly make decisions based on the reality of ”the way it is.”

Ajahn Sumedho wrote about sitting with “the way it is,” and in passing he mentioned boredom along with pain, anger and greed.  Sitting with boredom, the way it is, rather than being unhappy until it goes away, is what the teacher taught.  Here are his words:

“I used to like the kind of meditation where I could sit and get very calm – and then when pain would arise in the body, I’d want to get rid of it so that I could stay in that state of calm…. Rather than struggling to get rid of it so that I could come back to my `real’ meditation, I’ve learned to take time to be with the pains in my body if they come up in consciousness rather than trying to get some bliss.

“… we have to pay attention to things that are not at all interesting.  They way even be unpleasant and painful…. It is good to be able to just endure the boredom, the pain, the anger, the greed – all these things – instead of always running away from them.”

The title of the monk’s book is: The Way It Is–. Rather than fleeing the way it is, rather than being caught up in animal reactions of fight, flight or freeze, Buddhists practice paying attention to all of reality, “the way it is” and then choosing behavior mindfully.

In the Easter story, while Jesus is being questioned by the High Priests, Peter is said to have followed at a distance.  While warming his hands at a fire with the guards, a maid recognizes Peter and says:  “This man also was with him.” Three times Peter was identified as a follower of Jesus, and three times Peter denied knowing him.

The followers of Jesus who wrote the Gospel stories were all Jews, Messianic Jews.  From their ancient history of slavery in Egypt to the time of their occupation by Roman legions, Jews longed for a Messiah-Christ just like the great conqueror King David of a thousand years before.

Messianic Jews wrote the Christian Scriptures.  Though everyone knew that Jesus did not conquer but was actually executed by the Romans, they still wrote the “spin” that Jesus was a conquering Christ-Messiah, that he conquered death by rising from the dead.

Animal sacrifice has existed throughout Hebrew history.  For centuries, Jews brought offerings of a sheep or goat or dove to be ritually sacrificed to appease God. Animal blood was a substitute sacrifice for the sins of those who offered it.  In the Christian Bible, letters by Paul and Gospel writers explained the execution of Jesus as a substitutionary sacrifice for the sins of all humankind.  Some of us grew up with this.

Many know the lyrics to “The Old Rugged Cross”: 

“On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross, the emblem of suff’ring and shame,

And I love that old cross where the dearest and best for a world of lost sinners was slain.

In the old rugged cross, stained with blood so divine, a wondrous beauty I see,

For ‘twas on that old cross Jesus suffered and died, to pardon and sanctify me.

So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross, ‘till my trophies at last I lay down;

I will cling to the old rugged cross, and exchange it some day for a crown.”

Others know this song that I grew up singing:

“Alas and did my Savior bleed, and did my Sovereign die,

Would he devote that sacred head for such a worm as I?

At the cross, at the cross, where I first saw the light,

and the burden of my heart rolled away,

It was there by faith I received my sight, and now I am happy of the day.

Was it for crimes that I have done, He groaned upon the tree,

Amazing pity, grace unknown!  And love beyond degree….

Today, Easter Sunday, at this very moment Christians are singing:

“Low in the grave He lay, Jesus, my Saviour!

Waiting the coming day, Jesus, my Lord!

Up from the grave He arose, with a mighty triumph o’er His foes;

He arose a Victor from the dark domain, and he lives forever with his saints to reign;

He arose!  He arose!  Hallelujah!  Christ arose!”

 

“Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing pow’r?

Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

Are you fully trusting in His grace this hour?

Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

Are you washed in the blood, in the soul-cleansing blood of the Lamb?

Are your garments spotless? Are they white as snow?

Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?”

In Blessing the World: What Can Save Us Now, Rebecca Parker writes that in 1095, Pope Urban II launched the first “holy war” Crusade recruiting Christian knights with the promise that if they died their earthly debts would be forgiven and their deaths would merit rewards for their families.  “Inspired by this promise,” Rebecca Parker writes, “the crusaders… killed nearly one-third of the Jews in the Rhineland and then headed east to kill Muslims.  The theology that celebrated Jesus’ death as a redemptive sacrifice was the theology that justified the beginning of the Crusades.  It is a theology that says violence is sanctioned by God as a means of… restoring God’s honor.” Just three years later in 1098, Pope Urban’s friend, Anselm of Canterbury first published the formal Christian Doctrine of the Atonement as substitutionary redemption for the sins of the world.  Some 32 years later, in 1130, Peter Abelard countered Anselm by asking, “Who will forgive God the sin of killing his own child?”

Jesus Seminar scholars read the Gospel accounts of the Sermon on the Mount where, contrary to Jewish projection onto Jesus of the Messiah or Christ identity as a conquering King, rather, the Gospels report that Jesus said, “Love your enemies.” By their test of “dissimilarity” to prevailing views of the authors, the scholars conclude that the dissimilar passages of non-violent compassion toward all, toward oppressors as well as toward social outcasts, is the authentic teaching and lived example of Jesus.

Rather than being saved by violence or by the blood of a substitute sacrificial “lamb,” Jesus’ message is that God does not need blood sacrifice to love the world and all living things.  The killing of Jesus saved no one.  It is his message of compassion and universal loving-kindness that can heal and save the world.  The violence of conquerors and of violent liberators can only perpetuate the cycle of violence.

Apart from theology, the practical question is this:  If Jesus saw innocents suffer —Jewish girls raped by Roman soldiers, Jewish liberators hanged on crosses by the thousands, and the Jewish population reduced to poverty while indecent governors confiscated and exported the product of Jewish labor to Rome—how could Jesus have instructed his followers as he did Peter, that he put away his sword?  How can we face violence and abuse and turn to compassion rather than to violence for our salvation?  How can we sit with such pain and abstain from contributing to that pain?

Though Messianic texts of the Bible and evangelicals and political pragmatists argue that violence will save us and innocents from evil-doers, I hear the message of Buddhist teachers, of Rebecca Parker and Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and Jesus who bear witness that violence and blood sacrifice saves no-one.

What can save us is that terrifyingly uncomfortable, spiritual courage of Jesus, who walked his talk of nonviolent, universal compassion come what may — though all his friends abandoned him, though he could not protect innocents from his own fate, and though he would be tortured and die.

Sacrificing ourselves, killing or dying will not save us.  But our uncomfortable courage to stay true to values of universal compassion despite all threats, still makes love stronger than death.  Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh writes:

“Though we all have the fear

and seeds of anger within us,

we must learn not to water those seeds,

and instead, nourish our positive qualities—

those of compassion, understanding,

and loving kindness.” –Thich Nhat Hanh

 

 

Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Emerald Coast
“Celebrating Doubt”
Rev. Rod Debs
April 17, 2011

Story for All Ages:  “A Unitarian King” by Janeen K. Grohsmeyer, A Lamp in Every Corner (2004)

Message:  In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Christopher Lane, English professor at Northwestern University writes, “Our culture has become impoverished by certainty.” Professor Lane writes:  “In our overheated climate of polarized public debate, we give less credence to uncertainty…” than our Victorian forebears Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, George Eliot and Thomas Huxley – the one who coined the word `agnostic.’

The stridency of the Religious Right and of the New Atheists, he writes, “… misses how these Victorian intellectuals saw doubt as a creative force—inseparable from belief, thought, and debate and a much-needed antidote to fanaticism and zealotry.”

It seems to me that we who choose to place ourselves in Unitarian Universalist congregations are not looking for people who agree with us.  We are looking for people who think like us, people who approach the world with awe and wonder, with humility, with gratitude.  A lot depends on where we place ourselves and whether we pay attention — whether we see the world as a place of endless discovery and enriching new perspectives, or as fearsome, judgmental, and closed.  In her poem “The Summer Day,” Mary Oliver writes (House of Light, 1990):

“Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean—

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Perhaps we should memorize Mary Oliver’s poem.  My colleague in Montgomery, Rev. Paul Britner has taken up the practice of memorizing poems to recite on Sunday mornings.  Just as my Sabbatical is an opportunity to place myself in a foreign culture where I can experience different perspectives on the world, by entering the world of a poem and by committing that poem to memory, you place yourself where you can see the world differently.  May 1^st, Paul will be the first guest Sabbatical speaker offering you the opportunity to explore a new range of religious reflection and conversations.

Where we place ourselves matters.  At the McKees Creek Evangelical Friends Church I attended as a child, I learned that doubt is sin.  Rather than being an openness to alternative understandings, where I found myself, doubt was understood to be a refusal to believe that God’s promise is true.  Where I grew up, refusal to receive God’s gift of salvation would bring eternal damnation to the arrogant unbeliever.  Today, many of our family, friends and coworkers fear eternal retribution for their doubt.  No wonder the determined avoidance of diverse, alternative perspectives on anything religious.  No wonder the strident dogmatism of the most passionate among Christian evangelicals.

At the Unitarian Universalist Society of Black Hawk County where I served as minister for nine years, a math professor at the University of Northern Iowa, a Universalist Christian in the UU congregation kept the tradition of Maundy Thursday alive each year.  We would gather on Thursday of Holy Week to commemorate the institution of the Lord’s Supper now ritualized as Holy Communion.

`Maundy’ is short for the Latin mandatum, which means “command.”  It refers to the account of the Last Supper in the Gospel of John (13:34-35) in which Jesus says:  “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.  By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” As Jesus is said to have washed the feet of his disciples as a symbol of love and humility at the Last Supper, some Christians wash one another’s feet as part of their Maundy Thursday commemoration of the new commandment, “Love one another.”

At the UU congregation in Waterloo, Iowa, we didn’t wash one another’s feet – though it might well have been very meaningful.  We would each bring a little food to share — not the ritual bread and wine of the Eucharist, and not a full-scale potluck either.  And rather than lighting a chalice, we would extinguish the chalice and turn down the lights commemorating when Jesus was said to have entered the underworld, when darkness was said to come upon the earth (from around noon to 3:00 pm) as Jesus died.

Last week I spoke of the idolatry of locking onto various names and metaphors for reality or “the way it is.” “The tao that can be named is not the Tao.” How often we fail to see through the verbal symbols to the unnamable reality that grasps us with awe, humility and gratitude.  In the latter half of the 14^th century, an anonymous monk, a Christian mystic wrote The Cloude of Unknowyng.  It teaches contemplative prayer, humbly stripping away all thoughts under a “cloud of forgetting”— all thoughts except the love of God.  “For He can well be loved, but he cannot be thought.” (Christopher Lane, “When Doubt Became Mainstream,” The Chronicle of Higher Education).

Herbert Spencer, sociologist, philosopher, biologist, challenges us not to dismiss “the Unknowable,” the blindness in human understanding that the metaphors of religious beliefs once seemed to fill.  Human understanding is built on relative knowledge, symbolic models, rather than on absolutes (Ibid.).

Leslie Stephen, father of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell wrote:  “(Humanity) knows nothing of the Infinite and Absolute.”  “Knowing nothing, (then, humanity) had better not be dogmatic about his ignorance.” (Ibid.)  We must be humble in this blinding linguistic cloud of symbols, models and metaphors.

Jeanne Guyon writes:  “If knowing answers to life’s questions is absolutely necessary to you, then forget the journey.  You will never make it, for this is a journey of unknowables – of unanswered questions, enigmas, incomprehensible….” In the preface to his Pulitzer Prize-winning play Doubt, John Patrick Shanley writes that “doubt requires more courage than conviction does, and more energy; because conviction is a resting place and doubt is infinite – it is a passionate exercise.” (Ibid.)

If only as a lesson from life experience, and a lesson of history, truths are found in time to be partial. Pragmatism argues for doubt of all our passing perspectives. I come back to what the great Unitarian pragmatist, Benjamin Franklin wrote in his Autobiography: “I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information or fuller consideration to change opinions, . . . that the older I grow the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment and to pay attention to the judgment of others.”

The journey of understanding, seeing through the cloud of stories and words as well as through the particulars of experience, is, in the words of the Bible, to see through a glass darkly.  The wisdom of many traditions challenge us not to close our minds with conclusions, but to keep open our wonder, our humility, to doubt our partial truths.

Even when holding a good part of the truth, we would be wise to remember the quip from Poor Richard’s Almanac:  “Half the truth is often a great lie.”